The Wooden Bestiary
by Amicitia Revenant
Summary: They say you can't go home again. Leo is sure they're wrong. It's just that sometimes, home isn't the way you left it, and you aren't the same as when you left home. But your family is waiting – and there is always a way. Sequel to "A Paper Wall".
1. Prologue

A/N: Hello, all. A moment of your time, if you will. Before beginning this story, you should note (if you have not already) that it is a sequel to "A Paper Wall". I highly recommend reading that one before attempting this. In particular, read the version posted on FFN, as the last chapter is a little different and contains some scenes that are critical for setting up this next installment.

Okay, done that? Awesome. Next thing: This story is rated T for some strong language. If only I could get Raph to control himself. Also, as in many of my fics, there are some scenes that may look like Turtle-cest, but if you have read my other disclaimers then you already know nothing is going on.

The Turtles and their friends and possessions do not belong to me. Alas.

And finally: This story is entirely the fault of Willowfly. She ordered me to write it, held my hands to the keyboard (or to hot coals, when I resisted), and punished me severely when the most recent chapter was not up to her standards. The results are as you see.

**The Wooden Bestiary**  
(with apologies to Tennessee Williams)

Prologue

April answers a knock at the window, and doesn't even think there's anything odd about it anymore.

"Hi," she says, as Leonardo climbs into her apartment. "I didn't know you were coming."

He glances out the window, as she closes it and draws the curtains. "My family doesn't know I'm here."

She gestures him into the living room. "How are things with you and them?" she asks. "I haven't talked to you since..."

"Yeah." He hovers between two chairs, then picks one and sits in it. "Things have been... It's a long story."

She sinks slowly into a chair opposite, and looks at him expectantly.

He shakes his head. "Another time," he says. "Things are - better, mostly."

"I'm glad to hear it," she says. "Can I get you anything? Some tea?"

"No, thanks." He shifts in his seat. "I came to ask you about something else."

"Sure," she says.

"It's - kind of a favor." He looks at her nervously. "You can say no..."

She smiles at him reassuringly. "You haven't even told me what it is yet."

"I -" He reaches to his hip, and unknots a small pouch from his belt. He holds it in his hands a moment, then pulls open the drawstring and shakes the contents into his palm. "It's this."

He offers the objects to her, and she takes them. They're three delicate wooden carvings of animals. A horse in full gallop, its mane and tail flying. A dolphin, curved as if caught mid-leap. A swan, its wings folded and neck gracefully arched.

"They're beautiful," she says. "But I don't understand..."

"Would you... sell them?" he asks. "I mean - do you think anyone would buy them?"

"Absolutely," she says, examining the workmanship of the pieces with a practiced eye. "They're really good." She looks up. "Where did you get them?"

Leo looks surprised at the question. "I - made them."

"You -" She looks back at the carvings in her hands. "Wow, Leo. I had no idea..."

"They're nothing much," he says softly. "Just samples..."

"They are really good," she tells him. "_I_ would buy them."

"Thanks, April." He ducks his head, and she suspects he's blushing. "Um. On second thought, some tea sounds good..."

* * *

They sit in silence, and April remembers the first time she drank tea with the Turtles.

_She'd made some comment, just small talk, and they had all stared at her in astonishment. She had put her teacup down slowly, wondering what she had done wrong._

_"April," Donatello had said softly. "You don't talk to people when they're drinking tea..."_

Leo drinks slowly, meditatively, as he always does, and then he sets his teacup down, placing it precisely, completing the ritual.

"It would really help us out," he says, "if we could make some money off this."

She nods, understanding. "Do you want me to sell these?" she asks, gesturing to the three figures. She'd lined them up on the coffee table, and they stand there, frozen as if only waiting for the right moment to come to life. "Or are they only for show?"

He casts a deprecating glance at his work. "No one would pay for those," he says, despite what she had told him not twenty minutes earlier.

"Sure they would," she says.

His gaze turns calculating. "What, maybe... three dollars? For one of those?"

She looks at him, until he feels her gaze and raises his eyes to meet hers. "Leo... do you know what three dollars is worth?"

He frowns. "Too much?"

She sighs, struck again by how little her friends actually know about the human world. "Leo, three dollars is a cup of coffee. I can sell these for ten. Easily."

His eyes widen, then dart towards the carved figures, as if checking to make sure he and April are talking about the same thing. "Ten _dollars_? For _that_?"

She nods slowly, not wanting to scare him with sudden moves. "For a unique, beautiful artwork made by a local artist? Leo, I won't be able to keep them on the shelves."

He just stares at her in disbelief.

* * *

By the time she flicks the light on in the shop, Leo is already standing at the central display case, contemplating its contents. He had moved around the shelves of fragile antiques as though he hadn't even noticed it was dark.

She lays out the three carvings on the counter, making a mental note to get a stand for the dolphin, and reaches into the filing cabinet for paper and markers.

"Hey, Leo," she says, as she writes, and he looks up. "Would you say your art is environmentally sustainable?"

He blinks at her. "What?"

"Where does the wood come from?"

"Oh..." He moves to the counter, picks up the beached-looking dolphin, runs his thumbs over it. "It's just fallen branches. It's not worth anything."

"Made from eco-friendly renewable resources," April says, as she writes the same words with a flourish. She finds a roll of masking tape, tears off a piece, and affixes the sign to the glass surface of the counter.

Leo reads it. "_Fifteen_ dollars? April, you said ten!"

She shrugs. "I'll ask for fifteen. If people don't like it, they can haggle."

He glances from the figure in his hands to the number on the sign, trying to figure out how one equals the other.

"Okay, hard bargain time," April says, and his attention snaps back to her. "Twenty percent is mine," she says, "for display space, overhead, administrative costs and sales commission. The rest is yours."

He looks around slowly, then back to her. "Okay?"

She slaps her hand against the counter. "Come on, Leo. What did I just say about haggling?"

He puts the dolphin down, the wood clicking softly against the glass.

"Ask for ninety," she whispers.

"Ninety what?" he whispers back.

"Not a chance!" she says loudly, and he whips around, checking to make sure there isn't suddenly someone else in the store. "I can't feed my children for less than fifteen percent!"

He turns back to her in confusion. "April, you don't _have_ children."

"All right," she says. "You can have eighty-five percent. But that's my _final_ offer."

"April, I -"

She slaps the counter again. "Done. Pleasure doing business with you."

She sticks out her hand, and, for lack of a better response, Leo puts the dolphin in it.


	2. Doors

Chapter One - Doors

She sold the three figurines, and Leo brought her more, and she sold those also. The next time he comes to deliver new carvings, she hands him a small envelope.

He opens it curiously, unfolds the paper inside, reads it, and says, "April, what is this?"

"Oh, I'm sorry." She hits the button to open the register. "Did you want it in cash?"

He reaches over the counter and closes the drawer. Then he puts the paper down and turns it towards her. "April. What is this."

"That's... how much you earned..." she says.

He stands there, frozen.

She turns to the filing cabinet, starts pulling out receipts, grabs her calculator. "Seven for fifteen dollars each, and four of the larger ones for forty each, minus fifteen percent... equals...

He puts his hand over hers, opens his mouth, doesn't say anything.

She stares at him, wondering what she's done wrong.

"Two... hundred and..." The words run out, and he paces away across the store.

She sweeps the receipts into a pile, and goes out from behind the counter. He turns at her approach. "April, I've never seen that much money in my _life_."

"Technically," she ventures, "you _still_ haven't seen it."

"I -" He makes a queer slashing gesture. "I didn't even do anything!"

She shrugs helplessly. "Everyone keeps asking about them. I think I could sell them for more, if -"

He looks like he's about to have an apoplectic fit, so she stops talking. "Excuse me," he manages, and then he's out the inside door and up the stairs.

She goes back behind the counter and opens the wrapped parcels he left there. Four more tiny, delicate figures. Two of the larger ones. And one even bigger, a majestic eagle with wings spread and talons outstretched.

She runs her fingers over it, marveling at the intricate details of its feathers, its eyes, its beak. She pulls out a stand from the supply closet, and sets about deciding how to display the carving.

She's still debating whether it belongs on the sales counter or the display case when Leo comes back. She carefully doesn't say anything as he approaches the counter, picks up the chit, and looks at it again. "Is this the right number?" he says in a strange, strangled voice.

She pulls out the receipts and calculator again.

"No," he says. "Just -"

"That's the number, Leo," she says softly.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "Okay," he says. "Okay. Um. Will you... hold it for us?" He glances again at the number. "I mean, it's not like we can..."

"Already done," she says, and reaches for her ledger, intending to show him the page for her new vendor.

"No." He holds up his hand. "I don't - I believe you."

She puts the book back. "Whenever you want it," she says, "it's yours."

He nods and rubs the ridge between his eyes. "Will you... call Donnie about it? I can't..."

"Sure," she says. Then she pauses. "Leo... do they know...?"

He retreats, leans carefully against a wardrobe. "Mike sort of knows," he says. "Don and Raph..." He traces the grain of the floorboard with his toe. "I didn't think it would be anything... so I didn't..."

She rests her elbows on the counter, and thinks she understands.

_Didn't want them to know he tried, so they wouldn't know if he failed..._

"I think you should tell them," she says softly.

He nods again, an odd, tic-like movement.

"I -" She expects him to say _will_, but instead he says: "- should."

She frowns, and wonders if she doesn't understand at all. "Why wouldn't you?"

"Come on, April." He scuffs his foot against the floor. "We're ninjas. We survive off of stealth, and skill in battle. Not off of _art_."

She slaps her hand against the counter, and he jumps. "That is the stupidest damn thing I have ever heard." She points at the eagle, poised mid-flight on its stand. "You have a _gift_, Leo. Did I miss some law that says you can only be good at one thing?"

He lowers his eyes.

She comes around the counter to confront him. "I would think your family, of all people, would value art. Because you're named after, um, who is it? Oh, yeah. _Artists_."

"Da Vinci was mostly a scientist," he murmurs.

She throws up her hands. "Oh, for goodness sakes."

She moves closer to him, until he looks up. "Leonardo. Do you _like_ making these things?"

His eyes dart back and forth. "...Yes?"

"Does the production of them ultimately contribute to the well-being of your family?"

"Yes?"

"And is it _hurting_ anybody, this new artistic pursuit of yours?"

"No?"

She makes a _so there_ gesture. "So what do you think they're going to complain about?"

He ducks away from her glower, and paces across the store. "When we were younger," he starts, "Donnie... decided he was going to learn to sew. And -" He rests a hand on a display case, looking at his reflection in the glass. "My god, did we make fun of him for it."

"But -" Her brow furrows. "I've seen you sewing."

"Of course," he says. "All the time, we were bringing him things to sew. Bandanas that were unraveling. Stuffed animals that came loose at the seams. Clothes that needed patching." He sighs at his translucent mirror-image. "It didn't take us too long to figure out that sewing was useful, and not something to laugh at." He looks up at her. "I - didn't really think this would be like that."

"Well," she says, "it is." She smiles reassuringly at him. "Pretty soon, they'll all be wanting to get into business as independent artists."

A crooked smile creeps onto his face. "Thanks, April."

She crosses her arms and leans back against the wardrobe. "Any time."

* * *

_When they were younger, Splinter had taught them everything as a game. But over the years, the fun had been stripped away, and the bare bones of their lives were exposed, until it seemed there was nothing left but work and survival and keeping the family together._

_Leonardo had seen how things were going, and he had risen to the challenge, holding up the roof to protect a small breathing space where his brothers could hold onto their childish pursuits just a little longer. He had learned to find his own happiness in the happiness of his family, in Raphael's invented sports, in Donatello's tinkering, in Mikey's comic books._

_It was this, partly, that made Splinter choose him as the leader: the simple fact that he had taken many of the responsibilities onto himself before even being asked._

_And these responsibilities, this role, became everything to him. He forgot how to do things purely for fun. Everything he did had an ulterior purpose. For his health. To gain skill, to become better. Because his brothers needed him to._

_Then he had gone to the Ancient One, and his duties had been reduced to the singular. His only responsibility was to take a long, hard look at himself, to figure out where he had gone wrong and how he was going to put it right._

_In long evenings by the fire, he whittled. It was a kind of waking meditation, this carving away of everything that was extraneous, unneeded, to reveal the art inside the wood. He told himself __**I'm learning from it**__. He told himself __**If not this, something else equally useless**__. He told himself he would do it only until he went home._

_He didn't tell himself how much he enjoyed it, how much he would miss it._

_When he left, he took only the three carvings, the three peace offerings, for his brothers. Everything else he left for the Ancient One._

_The old man had probably thrown them in the fire by now._

_And, when he got home, he did stop carving. It got lost in the chaos of that strange summer. Then the conversation with Mikey, and he began to wonder if his pastime might be useful, if he might be allowed to hold onto it._

_He had hardly dared to hope._

_

* * *

_

He goes home in a daze, almost afraid to breathe, for fear that the tiny air currents or the oxygen in his brain will dissolve this fantasy he's blundered into. He lets himself into the Lair, goes straight up to Mikey's room, and knocks on the door.

"Yup?"

He goes in. Mike is lounging across his bed, his head propped on his hand, a book open in front of him.

"Mike," Leo says, "you're a genius."

"Yeah, I know." Mike closes the book. "What have I done?"

Leo hands Mike the chit.

Mike's eyes widen. "Holy cow."

"That's what April owes me," Leo says.

Mike looks up at him, then back at the number on the paper. "Holy _cow_."

"I know," Leo says. "What are we going to do with that kind of money?"

Mike reads the number one more time, then grins up at him. "Dude... what _aren't_ we going to do with this kind of money?"

Leo offers a watery smile. "Listen, Mike." He points to the paper. "I'm going to let Donnie deal with - that. But you tell him, this first bunch is yours."

Mike blinks at him. "Are you serious?"

Leo nods.

Mike rolls out of bed and punches him in the shoulder. "You're the best, bro."

Leo smiles.

* * *

_"On second thought," he had said, "Donnie will call __**you**__."_

_"Okay," she'd said. "Don't put it off too long."_

He puts it off until the next day.

He tells himself it's late.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep.

* * *

It's Mike who brings it up first.

"Bro," he says, in a quiet corner. "I'm dying to buy dinner for everyone. But I can't just suddenly have pizza money, if you get my drift..."

"Yeah," Leo says. "I get it."

* * *

Don sits expectantly on the floor. He had thought they were done with these family conversations, for a while, but it seems Leo has something else to say.

"Do you know my wooden carvings?" Leo asks, in a general way, and everyone nods. He takes a breath. "I've decided to sell them."

Don sighs softly. He had liked his little wooden owl. It made his barren new room feel less empty. "Okay," he says, pushing himself to his feet. "I'll go get it."

"Get what?" Leo asks.

Don turns back to him, brow furrowed. "The - you wanted to sell it?"

Leo stares at him in confusion. Then his expression clears. "Oh, _no_. Not _those_ ones. Donnie, I would never take back a gift."

Don sits again, slowly. "I'm not following."

"I've - I've been making more of them," Leo explains. "Because Mike thought that people would, um, pay for them, and, well... they have been."

"Leo," Raph says, in exasperation. "You wanna try telling this story _in order_?"

"Okay, see..." While Leo organizes his thoughts, Don sneaks a glance at Master Splinter. The old rat is just sitting there, listening knowingly. "Now that you guys want me to, you know, not hover so much, I ... needed something else to do. And Mike told me that if I made more of these carvings, then people might pay money for them. So I made a few, and I brought them to April, and she said she would sell them in her store, and..."

"Leonardo," Master Splinter says gently. "How long has this been going on?"

"I brought her the first ones three weeks ago," Leo says softly. "And, um, long story short..." The next words come out in a rush. "We have two hundred and twenty-five dollars."

Don can almost feel the influx of air as Raph's mouth gapes open. "_What?_"

Leo nods, and his voice becomes even softer. "And twenty-five cents."

"Holy shit," Raph says.

"That's what I said," Mike puts in. "Only with less swearing," he adds, when Splinter's admonishing gaze falls on him as well.

"Two hundred and -" Don is having trouble finding his normal voice, and he swallows. "Leo, are you serious?"

Leo nods again. "Donnie, I - I don't know what to do with it. Will you...?"

"Yes, of course," Don says faintly, even as his brain tries to comprehend the number. It's not really a very large number, objectively speaking, but somehow it seems a lot larger when it's in reference to money that belongs to his family.

"April is holding it for us," Leo says, and Don manages to find enough brainpower to process the words. "You should call her."

"I will," Don says.

"Okay, but _this_ money?" Mike says. "This first two hundred and whatever? Leo says it's mine. And the first thing I'm gonna do with it, is get some take-out." He gets up.

"Mike, wait." Leo reaches out to catch Mike's arm. "We don't actually have the money..."

"We ain't got a landline, either," Raph points out.

Mike frowns, then shrugs. "Oh well," he says. "Guess I'll have to buy dinner for April too." He swats at Raph, purely because he's closest. "Get up, we're goin' to dinner."

And they do.

* * *

"Okay," Mike says. "I need three large pies, extra tomato sauce on all of them. The first one -"

Leo turns away, and looks at April helplessly. "You don't mind?"

"No, of course not." She bends down, opens the hutch, and pulls out a thick stack of paper napkins. "You guys can buy me dinner any time."

"The address?" Mike says. "How should I know?"

April deftly takes the phone from him. "176 Bleeker. Yes. Thank you." She presses the button to end the call, and looks at Mike with raised eyebrows.

"Well?" he says. "Nobody ever puts house numbers on the roof..."

She holds out the napkins. "You do at least know how to set a table?"

"Do I know how to set a table." He scoffs and takes the napkins. "Go wait for the pizza, April. We'll take care of things up here."

She hesitates, at what a bunch of teenage ninjas might think constitutes _taking care of things_, but Leo gives her a tiny nod and she disappears down the stairs.

Mike tosses the napkins onto the table, then peels the first one off the stack and starts folding it into an origami turtle. "Hey, Leo," he says. "Do you think anybody would pay for one of _these_?"

"Mikey," Leo says, "I have _no idea_ what a human would pay money for."

* * *

April comes back upstairs with three pizzas and a fistful of change, all of which she puts on the neatly-set table. "I tipped him three dollars," she says. "Hope you don't mind."

"That's fine, April," Don says, when it's clear that neither Leo nor Mike knows how to respond to this. "You can, uh, put it on our tab."

"You bet I will," she says, and then she opens a box and the smell of hot pizza wafts out and everyone is more interested in eating than talking.

Somewhere around his third slice, Mike starts talking again, cheerfully listing all the things he plans to buy with his remaining almost-two-hundred dollars. Don doesn't really know how much the things on Mike's list cost individually, but as the wishes pile up he begins to suspect that collectively, they are far more expensive than Mike can afford.

"Leo," Raph says loudly. "Leo - Mikey, _shut up_ - after this the money is yours, right? And you're not gonna spend it on video games and action figures and -" He begins echoing Mike's list, naming each item a half-second after Mike does. " - a faux leather bomber jacket, a solid silver soup tureen, a wicked awesome robotic -"

"Hey!" Mike complains.

Raph smirks. "Shoulda shut up when I told you to." He turns his attention back to Leo. "But, I mean, you're gonna get some serious stuff, right? Not this nonsense that's just gonna drive the rest of us crazy?"

"Um, no," Leo says, lowering his half-eaten slice of pizza. "After this the money is _ours_."

Don and Raph exchange glances.

"So, what?" Raph says. "We're gonna vote on it?"

"Sure," Leo says. "What do you want?"

"Well," Raph puts down his pizza and wipes his greasy fingers on the edge of the plate. "I still think we seriously need a couch. And, y'know, I really like the new blankets and I think I'd like new furniture also. So I vote we _buy_ a couch."

They sit silently. None of them had yet thought about anything so large and simultaneously so _real_.

"I would be most in favor of it," Splinter says.

"Me too," Don says.

"Thirded," Leo says, while Mike mutters something about his brothers having no imagination. "April, how much...?"

"Does a couch cost?" She bites her lip. "A few hundred dollars? A thousand, maybe. Depends what kind you want..."

The family falls silent again, contemplating the prospect of spending more money than they've had in their entire lives to date on something they could get for free.

"Maybe..." Leo says. "Maybe we should start with something smaller. Just to... try it out."

Don nods. "There's no shortage of small things we could use."

Food. Cooking utensils. Medical supplies. Training equipment. Books. All the things they've been accumulating, painfully slowly, through regular trips to the dump.

"Well, anyway," Leo says, rousing them all from their reverie, "we shouldn't be spending money we don't have yet." He takes another bite of his pizza.

"Damn, Leo," Raph says. "If you're gonna bail on this thing..."

"No," Leo says. "I'm not. But I have other things to do, I can only carve so quickly..."

"Forget that," Raph says. He gestures to himself, Don, Mike, Master Splinter. "We've got it covered. You do your thing."

Leo looks at them warily. "Really?"

"Yeah, really," Raph says.

"Within reason," Splinter murmurs.

Don notices Leo doesn't look very happy as he says, "Okay."

* * *

That evening is the first time Raph has actually seen Leo carve something.

"What should it be?" Leo asks, as he settles himself in the kitchen with his whittling knife and a hewn-off disc of tree branch.

"A bear," Raph says.

Leo nods, and starts working, pushing the knife along with the pad of his thumb, pieces of wood falling around his feet as he sits sideways to the table.

Raph had imagined a rampant grizzly, but what emerges is a softly-rounded panda cradling its young. Somehow, Raph can tell it's a panda, even though the figure is inevitably grizzly-colored.

Leo doesn't look up as he delicately shapes the bears' faces with the point of his knife. On Leo's own face, Raph is sure he sees the ghost of a smile.

"There." Leo sets the palm-sized figure on the table, and it promptly falls over. "Hm." He sets it up again, on its curved bottom, balancing it with his finger. "Should I flatten it out?"

"No," Raph says. "I like it." He goes to the cabinet and fetches an egg cup, a bizarre little thing Mike had insisted on bringing home one night.

Leo sets the bear in it.

It fits perfectly.

* * *

Someone comes into Don's room as he's lying there, in bed but not yet asleep. He expects it to be Mike, but it isn't.

"He's doing it again," Leo whispers.

Don makes a small noise against the pillow. "Who's doing what?"

Leo sits on the edge of the bed. "Raph. He's pushing me away..."

"Leo, you've got to be kidding."

Leo doesn't answer.

Don rolls over and sits up, coming upright behind Leo's back. "Leo... why are you doing this? Your art?"

"I -"

"Don't lie to me."

Leo breathes deeply, then lets it out. "... I like it."

"Okay, so..." Don leans sideways against Leo's shell. "You're upset because... Raph gave you permission to do something you like."

"Donnie -" Leo makes as if to turn around, but he can't because Don will fall over. "Come on. You heard how he said it. _Do your thing._ He might as well have said _go away_."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Don says, "but usually if Raph wants someone to go away he just says it. In exactly those words."

Leo doesn't say anything.

"Leo..." Don rearranges the blanket over his legs. "Do you remember how I said we're okay without you, but we like having you around?"

"Yes, of course."

"What did you think I meant by that?"

"Well, you - it's just easier when there are more of us, to share the work around..."

"Leo," Don says, "you are not that dense. What do you think you are, an interchangeable part?" He leans back on his elbows, so he can see the outline of his brother's face. "This may be a difficult concept, but - we like _you_. Not your work output, or your objectively-measured contribution to the greater good. _You._"

In the dim room, he can just see the whites of Leo's eyes. "Donnie, I know that. It's just that when you put the _we like you_ next to the_ we don't need you_... I don't know what to think."

"Think this," Don says. "Think that your little brothers have finally gotten off their lazy butts, and you don't have to work yourself to death for them anymore. Think that you're not the only one who feels good when other people are enjoying their hobbies. Think that we want you to have a little happiness that belongs just to you, and not this second-hand happiness you're always living off of."

Leo's eyes disappear as he turns away.

"What I'm saying is -" Don turns onto his side. "We can do enough work so that you have time to carve. And we don't _mind_ doing it. If art makes you happy, then the fact you can make money off it is only a bonus. And if you don't feel like doing it anymore... then don't. We've gotten this far without regular income."

Leo is quiet for a long time. Then he simply says, "Okay." And, "Can I...?"

Don twitches the blanket aside. "Yes, of course."

Leo slides in beside him, and Don finds sleep easier to come by.


	3. Windows

Chapter Two - Windows

Raph goes out a lot, during the day. One morning, Mike meets him at the door as he's leaving.

"Take me with you," Mike says.

Raph doesn't ask why.

He doesn't say anything until they're a mile away from the Lair. Then he simply says: "You okay?"

"Huh?" Mike glances at him. "Yeah... Just gotta get out, ya know?"

"Yup," Raph says. Now that there's not very much to do around the Lair, the emptiness of it is getting to him.

"I mean," Mike says, "I'm glad that we got rid of all the mushrooms and there aren't dead people floating around anymore, but... it's still a place where people died, and the cleaning _never_ ends..."

"Mikey..." Raph says, abruptly turning the conversation. "Do y'feel like Leo's... not all there?"

Mike frowns at him.

"Not, I mean -" He makes a gesture at his head. "Just... like somethin's _missing_."

Mike's eyes skate along the ground as they walk.

"I mean," Raph tries, "angry, yelling-at-everybody Leo was no picnic, but tiptoeing-around Leo is weird too..."

Mike nods.

"What's his _problem?_" Raph says, a little louder than necessary. "What the hell else do we have to _say_ to him?" He turns to Mike. "I'm not the only one, right?"

"No, you're -" Mike makes a vague gesture. "He's not the same." He looks sideways at Raph. "You've been tiptoeing too. With him."

"Well, yeah, he's..." Raph kicks at a tin can, and it clatters away down the tunnel. "He used to not take shit from me, y'know? Now it's like he's checking every little thing with me, making sure I don't mind... He's so damn _cautious_, Mike. I'm afraid if I look at him the wrong way, he'll fall apart."

Mike is thoughtful for a while. "Leo's not like that," he says.

"Leo _used_ to not be like that," Raph mutters.

"No," Mike says. "Remember when Master Splinter made it official, that he was leader? Oh, man, he was awful. Ordering us around all day... you remember?"

"Yeah," Raph says. "I remember."

"But then he figured out," Mike goes on, "leading wasn't about ordering us around. It was about - _leading_ us. Leading us into battle, leading us home again still in one piece. You remember how he got then?"

Raph nods. "He totally freaked out."

"Yeah," Mike says. "He was so scared of making a mistake. And then he started -"

"Leadership by committee," Raph interjects.

"Which was a total mess," Mike picks up. "We all would just yell at him, telling him what to do. And then, finally..."

"He yelled back." Raph remembers that moment, _Leo breathing hard, his hands over his ears, his eyes squeezed closed. "Just shut up..." They had all stood there, stunned, as their leader cringed before them. Slowly, he had straightened, fixed them all with a steady gaze. "Thank you. I've heard enough. I'm making a decision now."_

"He doesn't fall apart," Mike says. "He... solidifies." He looks up through a grate. "You're right; he's lost something. But he'll find it again." He turns his gaze to his brother. "Stop being weird at him. You're only making it worse."

Raph considers this. "You think I should... yell at him more?"

Mike smiles. "Be your brutally honest self, bro. He can deal with it."

Raph looks at the square of sunlight on the floor below the grate. "Yeah. Okay. I can do that."

* * *

Leo thinks he's carving too much.

He had cut away the anger, the guilt and self-hatred, and it had been good. When he came home again, he had kept cutting, only too willing to pare himself down, to slide into the narrowed space that had held him eight months before.

But, as slivers of wood fall into his lap, he thinks that he's cut too much, and lost something important.

When he watches TV shows about kids in school, it seems like the worst thing in their lives is waiting to get "picked" in gym class. He feels like he spent five weeks waiting to get picked, until Mike finally gave him a place to stand.

He's learning to be happy, in his new place. He enjoys whittling, and he likes the idea of providing his family with the means to procure things they've never had before. There's a strange distance between effort and reward, a lack of immediacy he hasn't had before, but he's forward-thinking enough to not mind very much. He can still sit by his brothers' bedsides when they're sick. It's just that now, he'll be able to give April money to buy medicine for them, so he won't have to worry later about how he'll repay her for spending out of her own pocket.

And yet, it feels like something is missing. Like he's not the same person that he was.

_It's just confidence. You're just not used to things yet._

He's still settling, he knows, still working out with his family who does what, and when, and how. Things will fall into place, and he'll put down roots, fitting himself comfortably into the space they give him, filling it up with his spirit.

Dead wood can't replace the chunks that have been cut away.

But spirits... can regrow.

* * *

A message pops up on the screen.

_Hi, Don. I see you're back on-line._

He bends his fingers over the keyboard.

_Hi, April. I finally got around to redownloading IM._

_Things must be getting quiet over there._

_You say that like it's a bad thing._

A pause. He takes a sip of water.

_Listen - I don't know whether I should really be talking to you or Leo about this, but I went over the books last night and... do you want to know how much I owe you this time?_

He glances around to make sure he's alone.

_Don't worry, I'm sitting down._

The next message is simply a number.

_182.75_

He takes a slow breath. The number isn't quite as big as the first one, but it happened in one week instead of three. While he's thinking, April types again.

_What do you want me to do with it?_

He rubs his snout, then puts his fingers to the keys again.

_Listen, April... I've been researching this, and I don't think I get a whole lot of choice._

He waits a moment, but the IM client doesn't indicate that she's typing, so he continues.

_Every financial institution I've looked at requires information that we just can't supply. I really don't see how we could have any kind of independent account._

A brief pause, then a reply.

_I could open it in my name._

He curls and uncurls his fingers thoughtfully, then types again.

_Yes, but you would still have to handle all the deposits and withdrawals for us, so I really don't see the point. Can you just put the money wherever yours is, and keep the accounts on paper?_

April takes a long time to reply, but this time Don waits.

_I would have to figure your percentage of the interest..._

He answers quickly.

_Don't bother. Consider it a banking fee._

_Are you sure?_

_Positive, April. You've done more than enough for us already._

Her answer, too, comes without hesitation.

_It's my pleasure._

He smiles, and minimizes the IM window.

A few minutes later, the tab on his toolbar starts blinking again. He clicks on it.

_Another thing._

_Yes?_

_Everyone is very curious about the 'anonymous artist'. Can you ask Leo what I should tell them?_

He frowns.

_Why should you tell them anything?_

_Well, most people aren't too bothered about it, and they drop the subject. But some people harass me and then refuse to buy the carvings, because they're offended by the creator's secrecy, or something._

He blinks, and re-reads the sentence, trying to find the right meaning for April's disembodied words.

_Honestly, I'm not too concerned if we lose a few sales._

_No, me neither. Obviously your safety is more important... but it makes for some really awkward conversations, and if I could just put a short generic bio at the bottom of the sign, it would be a big help._

He shakes his head. No. Of course April wouldn't put them in jeopardy, just to make a couple of dollars on sales commission.

Another message comes.

_Ask him whether I can put this: "The artist is a local teen who enjoys studying history, practicing martial arts, and, of course, carving wooden figures. He hopes his art brings enjoyment to you and your family as well."_

Don casts around for paper, finds Gary's address, briefly wonders how that migrated back into his lab, and copies April's lines onto the back of it.

_I'll show it to him._

_Thanks._

_No problem._

_

* * *

_

Some time later, he takes paper and pencil and goes to find Leo.

It doesn't take him long. Leo is sitting in the kitchen, contemplating the bear in the egg cup.

(Mike had abused them all for not understanding the true purpose of the serving device. "Of course we know what it's for," Raph had retorted, "but since when do we eat eggs out of stupid little vases?"

"Never mind," Leo had said. "I'll bring it over to April soon anyway."

"No," Raph had said. "It's staying there."

And it had stayed, apparently to prove a point, although Don was still working out what exactly was being demonstrated.)

Leo rouses himself when Don comes in. "Hey."

"Bad time?" Don asks.

"No." Leo rolls his shoulders, rubs his head. "What's up?"

"Message from April," Don says, sitting down and putting the paper in front of himself. "She says some people are acting very entitled about their right to know who makes the things they want to buy, and if she had something to tell them, it would get them off her back."

Leo frowns. "What, about my...?" Don nods, and Leo's brows draw closer together. "Why would she even say that? She knows we can't..."

"Of course she knows," Don says. "She's not asking permission to tell people the artist is a big turtle. She just needs something very general, to satisfy their curiosity."

Leo shifts in his chair, still not liking the idea.

Don turns the paper around. "She suggested this," he says. "It's completely uninformative, while making you feel like you've learned something."

Leo reads the lines quickly. "It's a little close to home," he says. "If the wrong person saw it..."

"I don't think the Foot frequent April's shop, Leo," Don says gently. "Even if they did, they already _know_ she's a friend of ours. I don't really see what they would gain from finding out you carve wooden animals."

Leo looks again at the words on the page. "I would feel better."

Don hands him the pencil.

When Leo gives it back, sliding the paper across the table, the message has changed. _Studying history_ has been replaced with _learning_; _practicing martial arts_ with _playing sports_. It evokes a faceless person, a boy without a soul.

Don looks up at Leo, and sees a hardness in his expression that's been absent lately. _It would be better to write something totally fabricated_, he wants to say, but that would belie everything Leo is. The biography might be short, vague, generic - but it is, at bottom, _honest_.

"Okay," he says. "I'll send it back."

* * *

Raph and Mike sit on the floor, watching Klunk play with some curls of wood she had carried out of the kitchen.

"Hey, Mikey," Raph says, when he gets bored of saying nothing. "What're you _really_ going to do with the money? I mean, uh, I don't think anybody actually sells Armor of Invincibility..."

"Ahh..." Mike leans back on his hands, sinking his head between his shoulders. "I dunno. I borrowed Donnie's computer, and started looking at what things cost... Two hundred dollars goes really fast, Raph."

"Well, yeah," Raph says. "But you might as well do _something_ with it. A pile of cash ain't that much fun."

Mike had requested the amount in hard currency, and for the past week it had been sitting in his room, a strange abstract placeholder for all the things it might be exchanged for. For a few days they all had delighted simply in possessing a stack of bills, in the electric possibilities of paper marked as _Legal Tender_. Then the novelty had worn off, as they had realized that money, in and of itself, was neither useful nor very exciting.

Mike hums equivocally. "It's like - I don't want to be selfish about it, y'know? But on the other hand, Leo gave it to me, like a gift, and I think he'd be kinda disappointed if I was _sensible_ about it."

Raph runs his gaze over the Lair, and thinks. "You know what," he says. "You should get one of those video games we all used to play together. Everyone would know it's mostly for you, but it would be something we could all have fun with."

Mike considers this. "We don't have a TV."

"Yeah, I know," Raph says. "But after the couch - we are getting a frikkin' TV."

Mike nods sagely. "Raph - I like how you think."

* * *

Later, Leo hands Raph some wrapped parcels and asks him to take them over to April's.

"Take them your own damn self," Raph says, shoving them back.

Leo looks startled. Over his shoulder, Raph sees Mike shake his head minutely.

"Ah, never mind," Raph says, taking the packages from Leo's unresisting hands. "I gotta get some air anyway."

Mike follows him out.

"What the hell, Mike?" Raph says, as soon as the heavy door closes behind them. "You told me to yell at him, now you're changing your mind?"

"I didn't tell you to be rude to him for no reason," Mike says, as they pick up into an easy jog. "I mean, no _duh_ you wanted some air. You were practically out the door already."

They're silent as they climb up the ladder, replace the manhole cover, and ascend to the roofs. The vertical margins of the city are theirs, but in between they must pass like shadows, never lingering, never leaving a mark.

"So what am I supposed to yell at him _about_?" Raph asks, as though there had been no break in the conversation.

"You know," Mike says. His words are measured to fit into the rhythm of his breaths, his footfalls, his leaps. "Little things. Let him remember how to stand up to people."

"He won't fight me over little things," Raph says. "It won't be worth it."

Mike is silent for the next two buildings. "Then yell at him about a big thing. But - it's gotta be the _right_ big thing, Raph. You can't pick a fight with him just for the heck of it."

"It's not for the heck of it," Raph says. He vaults over a satellite dish. "It's for his own good."

"You can't fight with him for his own good," Mike says.

"Why not?" Raph demands. He surges ahead, bounces off a clothesline to gain the next roof, waits impatiently for Mike to catch up with him.

"Because he's _not_ fighting for _our_ good," Mike says.

Raph glances over at Mike, and sees that Mike is looking back at him, making sure he's listening.

"You have to pick something that matters," Mike says. "Something he cares about enough that he won't drop it just to keep the peace."

Raph grunts, somersaults off the roof, and lands on April's fire escape.

"I mean it," Mike says, as he drops soundlessly beside Raph. "We've got a new boat, and Leo's trying not to rock it. Don't go around poking holes in the bottom."

Raph knocks on the window.

* * *

Sometimes, Leo really wishes they lived aboveground. It's hard to stare moodily out a window when you live in a sewer.

"You did not wish to go out tonight?"

Leo turns from the small pile of books in the locker. "No, Sensei."

Splinter tilts his head. "Is something troubling you?"

"No..." he says again. "I don't know. I just don't feel like doing anything tonight." He pulls a book from the stack. "Do you think this one is any good?"

Splinter regards the dog-eared cover. "It looks... quite uninteresting."

"Probably," Leo says. He tucks it to his chest anyway. "Maybe I'll just go to bed early."

"If you wish to talk..." Splinter says.

"Another time," Leo says. "Good night, Sensei."

"Good night, my son."

* * *

"Evenin', April."

She steps back from the window, and he climbs inside, Mike coming after him. "Where do you want these?" he asks.

She gestures around vaguely. "Anyplace. What's in them?"

He shrugs, moving to put the packages on the telephone table. "I dunno, I lost track. Did you get the stag yet?"

"No," she says, intrigued.

"Well," he says, and that's all he has to say on the subject.

* * *

Somehow they wind up down in the shop.

Raph finds himself looking at two sentences at the bottom of a handmade sign. "_The artist is a_... Who the hell is this?"

"It's what he wanted," April says. She's rubbing the new carvings with a soft cloth before setting them out on the counter. She glances at him. "Do you know, people think he's of Native American descent?"

Raph blinks. "What?"

"Mm-hmm." She picks up a wolf - sitting, tail curled around its feet, neck curved as it looks over its shoulder - and Raph has to admit there is something Spirit-of-the-Indian about it. "They think the animals are totems. Channeled spirits."

"If they only knew..." Raph mutters.

"You wouldn't believe the stories I'm hearing," April says. "People buy one, then come back and tell me about the amazing luck they've had. Here -" She reaches for a square, leather-bound book, lying closed on the corner of the counter. "I started a guestbook. A lot of them are just comments about workmanship, but some of them..."

Raph flips the book open, turns a couple of pages, and starts reading. Mike appears at his shoulder, looking also at the stories, each told in different handwriting.

"That's wild," Mike says. "Ten years later..."

"It's a coincidence," Raph says.

"Yeah?" Mike says. "What about this one? Bought a rabbit, two days later she got the promotion she'd been passed over for three times. Also coincidence?"

"They're freakin' wooden animals," Raph snaps. "They're not _magic_."

"Oh, lighten up," Mike says. "Good things are happening to people, who cares _why_?"

"It's just kind of strange," April says. "I mean, you guys aren't...?"

"_No_," Raph says. "Come on, April. If we had a little bottle of good luck, don't you think we'd be using it on _ourselves_ first?"

"Good point," she says.

"Damn right." He closes the book. "We gotta get home. Does Leo know about this?"

"No," April says. "He hasn't been by."

Raph nudges Mike. "Come on. I'm feeling a need for honesty."

"Night, April," Mike says, as Raph drags him out of the shop.

* * *

When they get home, Raph finds that Leo has already gone to bed.

He goes to his own bed, and waits for morning.


	4. Walls Come Down

Chapter Three - Walls Come Down

Raph holds his tongue until breakfast, because morning training is not the place to start an argument. He's even generous enough to wait until Leo settles himself with a cup of yogurt.

"So," he says, stealing the yogurt bucket for himself and glopping some into a mug. "You wanna tell us anything _else_ you learned from the Ancient One?"

Leo pauses, his spoon stuck in his mouth.

"Raphael," Splinter says. Raph's impatience had been evident in his approach to that morning's training exercise, and it had sapped Splinter's own patience, drawing it away like a magnet. "What is this about?"

"Had an interesting conversation with April last night," Raph says, as Leo slowly withdraws the spoon from his mouth, capturing the yogurt with his lips. "Apparently, people think your dumb animals are good-luck charms."

"People think a lot of things," Leo says.

"You wanna hear some interesting anecdotes?" Raph jams his spoon into his yogurt, disregards Leo's lukewarm response, and barrels on. "Woman loses touch with her high school boyfriend. Ten years later, buys one'a your critters. Three _days_ later, runs into the guy at a concert."

"So...?" Leo says.

"Guy's not married, he regrets she got away, they're dating again." Raph stares hard at his brother.

"That's very nice for them," Leo says.

"'Nother guy," Raph goes on. "Buys one'a your things, starts carryin' it around with him. Couple weeks later, gets in a car accident. On the highway. With an eighteen-wheeler. _Walks away_."

"Raph," Leo says. He puts his spoon down, very carefully. "What are you getting at?"

"I'm just sayin'," Raph holds Leo's gaze, "that if you'd like to volunteer any information about -"

"About _what?_" Leo says.

"About whatever that crazy old dude -"

"Raphael!"

Raph looks up sharply.

"He is your _ancestor_," Splinter says, his eyes blazing. "And Leonardo is your _brother_. You will speak civilly."

"Sorry, Sensei," Raph mutters.

"They're wood, Raph," Leo says, and Raph senses a controlled anger in him. "That's _all_." He turns to Splinter. "May I be excused?"

Splinter nods, and Leo rises, glancing around at all of them before walking out.

His yogurt sits on the table.

* * *

"Pretty smooth, Raph," Mike says, as they're cleaning up the kitchen.

"I'm just sick of him bein' so secretive." Raph slams a wet bowl onto the counter, almost hard enough to break it.

"He's _not_," Mike says. "Did you miss the part where he was being really open about everything?"

Raph scrubs a spoon, furiously.

"All you have to do is ask," Mike tells him, scooping up the bowl with a towel and rubbing it dry. "Nicely."

"But why doesn't he -"

"Why doesn't he _what_, Raph?" Mike slides the bowl out of the towel, back onto the counter. "Give us a long, boring lecture about all the stuff he did over there? Yeah, I'm sure you'd like that a _lot_ better."

Raph clatters the wet spoon into the dry bowl.

"That's mature, Raph." Mike leans his hand on the counter, the towel balled up under his palm. "Also, at what point did you want him to mention all the stuff he _didn't_ do over there? Because seriously, bro, I'm pretty sure he _wasn't_ learning magic."

"Yeah?" Raph lifts his soapy hands from the sink. "Then how d'you explain those stories? _You're_ the one who said they weren't coincidence."

Mike gives him a weird look. "Dude, did you drink floor cleaner or something? How does 'it's not a coincidence' automatically lead to 'Leo is doing voodoo'?"

"Okay." Raph crosses his arms, smearing the soap bubbles across his elbow pads. "What is it, then?"

Mike mirrors his pose, only with less foam. "It's just that psychology thing. People buy some nice art, they feel good, they act happy, good stuff happens to them." He shrugs and uncrosses his arms, returning to his easy lean against the edge of the counter. "It works for me. I mean, I usually go straight to the acting-happy part, but..."

Raph glares at him.

"You really should try it," Mike says. "Life's better when you're not grouchy all the time."

"Forgive me if I'm not seein' how _actin' happy_ makes a lady's old flame show up at a concert," Raph says.

"It didn't make him show up," Mike says, with an air of supreme patience. "It made her find him. Because she wasn't all 'grr, that concert sucked, I'm gonna go straight home and brood in my den of misery'."

Raph's eyes narrow. "You wanna say something, bro?"

Mike smiles at him. "Nope, I think I'm done talking now."

Raph snatches the towel from under Mike's hand, making him slip against the smooth countertop. He whirls the towel in the air, and drapes it over Mike's head. He smirks as it settles, clinging wetly to his brother's face.

"Dry the damn dishes, sunshine."

* * *

"Mike, could you help me with something?"

He looks around, making sure there isn't some other Mike that Don might be talking to. "Me?"

Don nods. "If you have a minute."

"Yeah, sure." Mike abandons the algebra problems Splinter had set for him (_obviously cribbed from the spiral notebook_) and follows Don back to his work corner. "What's up?"

Don taps the back of his finger against the wooden wall. "I'm taking it down."

Mike blinks. "Really?"

"Mm-hmm."

"You sure?" Mike asks. "And, I mean, you don't want Raph to help instead? He put it up..."

"Oh, I'm sure Raphael would _love_ to tear this wall down," Don says. "But he was completely obnoxious this morning and I don't feel like rewarding that kind of behavior. So I thought you also might enjoy this."

"Would I ever," Mike says, and Don hands him a yellow-handled screwdriver, and they start dismantling the panels.

"Do you even know what that was about?" Don asks, when half of the wall is stacked neatly on the floor, beside the leftover pieces of the water tank.

"Hmm?" Mike has three screws pinched in his lips and couldn't give a more articulate answer even if he knew what Don was referring to.

"This morning," Don supplies.

"Mm." Mike spits the screws into his palm. "Raph's got his girl-panties in a twist because Leo isn't being arrogant."

Don blinks at him. "Excuse me?"

"Yeah, well, I kind of did it too," Mike says. He moves to set the screws on Don's desk. "I was all, 'Leo, do your leader thing, tell us what to do', but now I'm like, no, it wouldn't've worked."

Don leans against the remaining half-wall, then realizes that's a bad idea and straightens up again. "You've lost me, Mikey."

"Well, look." Mike plunks down into Don's stolen kitchen chair. "Stuff really did change while he was gone, right? And if he had come back and been all, 'Okay troops, we're gonna do it like we did before'... y'know?"

"I get it," Don says.

"So I finally figured out," Mike says, "that he's not hanging back because he's still scared or whatever. He's more... standing on the side, figuring out our new playbook, so we can go forward, instead of going back to where we left off."

Don nods. "Hm."

"But Raph just doesn't get it," Mike concludes. "He's all, 'Leo, make stuff normal NOW'. But I don't think he even knows where normal _is_."

Don is silent for a moment. "I'm not sure I see what this has to do with the wooden animals."

"Um." Mike rubs his toes together nervously. "I kinda told him to... pick a fight with Leo? So he would get the idea that we want him to, uh..." He withers under Don's gaze. "Okay, not the most brilliant advice I ever gave."

"Really," Don says dryly.

Mike hunches up, making himself a smaller target. Don sighs and turns back to the wall, twisting out another screw. "Come hold this up."

Mike goes around the other side of the wall, and holds the panel in place while Don disconnects it from its neighbors.

"I think," Don says, after a while, "that the two of them have it backwards."

Mike peers around the wall at him. "Don't they always?"

Don shakes his head. "Raph keeps saying that he wants Leo to tell him more about when he was away... but really _Raph_ should be telling _Leo_."

Mike tries to parse this, and fails. "Uh?"

"You're right," Don says. "Leo is trying to figure out where he stands. And, to an extent, I can understand that Raph wants him to hurry up and catch on to what's changed. But so far we've been letting him work it out from observation and subtle hints." He waits, focusing on his work, while Mike starts to see where he's going. "How would it be if we just _told_ him?"

A grin spreads slowly over Mike's face. "See," he says, "this is why _you're_ the _smart_ brother."

* * *

Leo isn't meditating, exactly.

He's sitting in the dojo, controlling his thoughts, calming his anger.

The fact that he's sitting on a narrow beam balanced across two supports - leftover equipment from the morning's training exercise - is besides the point.

Raphael can't possibly believe that there's anything supernatural about the wooden animals, but for the life of him Leo can't figure out what Raph is really angry about.

This is nothing new.

On the surface, Raphael is an astonishingly blunt and tactless person. But underneath, he is a master of misdirection, always cloaking his true feelings, always coming at his goals from behind. He launders his frustration through layers of lesser grievances, and attacks from a position that can't be struck back at. It's impossible to argue with Raph, because the target he presents is nothing more than an illusion, safely removed from the true source of his anger.

Leo makes himself breathe slowly, exhale, let go of his negative feelings.

The beam he sits on reminds him of the bridge in front of the waterfall near the Ancient One's home, and he tries to draw on the tranquility he always felt there.

_"Leonardo! You must go! ... Your family is in grave danger!"_

Always, except once.

Raph claims to hate a lot of things, but most of them are just covers for what _really_ bothers him, for what he can't, or won't, admit to disliking. Perceived danger to the family, though, is one of the things that upset him on a deep level.

Leo sifts through the events of recent weeks. Their family was attacked in their own home, and each of them nearly lost their lives. They were separated... but then they were reunited, and the strange occurrences that followed, while unsettling, turned out to not be very dangerous at all.

_Is Raph still upset about Karai's attack?_

He shakes his head.

_And he's channeling it through people's weird stories about my carvings?_

Something about this doesn't sit right, but Leo can't see any reason that makes more sense.

He breathes, and balances.

* * *

Don is looking at the place where the wall isn't.

Mike shifts nervously. He knows that look.

"Do you know what this reminds me of?" Don says.

"Dude," Mike says, "I _never_ know what stuff reminds you of."

Don turns his head, and fixes Mike with his gaze. "The access tunnel."

"_No_," Mike says flatly. Even though nothing remotely like the incident in the waterway has happened since the ghosts vanished, he's still freaked out about it. He's barely been in the water since.

Don puts a hand on Mike's shoulder, a brief, reassuring touch. "Don't worry. I'll take care of it."

Mike looks away. Out of the corner of his eye, something about the monitor he's perched next to catches his attention. "Bro, you have a blinkie."

"Hm?" Don gets up from the edge of the desk and moves around Mike to peer at the screen. "Ah."

"What is it?" Mike asks.

"It's just April." Don pulls the chair around, sits in it, and types a response.

Mike leans over his shoulder, but doesn't yet look at the words in the little window. "Can I read?"

"I should certainly hope so," Don replies. He glances up, and grins. "No, go ahead."

Mike gives Don a shove, because he deserves it, and then turns his attention to the typed messages.

_Donnie, is everything okay down there?_

_Well, I wouldn't say EVERYTHING is okay, but no major disasters. Why?_

_I'm trying to call Leo and he's not answering._

Don is typing again.

_We don't generally have our phones on us during the day..._

_I know, but I don't like to call at night, because you might be out and I wouldn't want your phone to ring at a bad moment._

_Appreciated- Give me a minute to locate Leo and phone._

"I got it," Mike says, and jogs off.

He checks the kitchen first, thinking that Leo might have gone back there to eat some breakfast in peace. His second guess is the dojo, and when he gets there he finds Leo sitting on a narrow plank, ten feet off the ground, his back to the door.

Mike edges around, trying to see whether Leo is zoned out in one of his serious, hardcore, Do Not Disturb meditation sessions.

He's only gotten as far as a reverse three-quarters view when Leo says, "If this is a stealth exercise, you lose."

"Just looking for you," Mike says, and Leo turns his head. "If you're not too busy getting enlightened, you have a lady caller."

Leo frowns.

"April's trying to reach you," Mike clarifies, which is a much less interesting way of putting it.

"Okay," Leo says. "I'm coming." He wraps his hand around the beam beneath him, then slides off, releasing his grip to drop easily to the floor.

Mike follows Leo upstairs and into his room. As Leo picks up his shell-cell from its designated spot on his shelf, he looks at Mike curiously, as though he's not entirely sure how this strange foreign object got into his neatly laid-out room. But he doesn't comment, only flips the phone open and dials.

"Hello, April," he says, and listens. "No, just keeping myself occupied. ... Go for it. ... Mm-hmm. ... A ...?" His eyes widen. "She wants to do _what?_"

Mike watches the one-sided conversation, intrigued.

"No," Leo is saying, "that's ridiculous. ... I can't. No. Absolutely not. ... _No_, April." He listens in agitation, and Mike remarks on the odd way Leo never paces. "I don't care, I'm not doing it. ... Yes, that's - you'll just have to tell her something." He rubs his forehead. "Thanks, April. ... You, too. 'Bye."

He throws the phone onto the bed, and just stands there, looking at it.

"What was that about?" Mike asks.

It takes Leo a moment to reply. "A journalist wants to interview me."

Mike tries to fill in the blanks, but can't imagine any logical context for this sentence. He shakes his head. "Bro, you've gotten seriously bad at telling stories lately."

Leo sits slowly on the edge of the bed, running his hand over the blanket to palm the phone. "A writer from the _Post_," he says. "She was researching for a piece about local antiques shops, and she visited April's... Apparently they had a conversation about my figures, and she - the journalist - she read..." He trails off. "These stories Raph was telling me about, they're in some book?"

"Yeah," Mike says. He sits down beside his brother. "April's got this notebook on the counter, for people to write comments about your animals, and some of them have been writing these weird stories."

Leo nods, filling in the blanks in his own story. "So this journalist, she wants to also write an article about the anonymous artist whose work is having such an effect on people." He looks up. "There's nothing special about them, I swear."

"Of course they're special," Mike says.

"Mikey -"

"Because you made them." Mike leans against Leo, and wraps his arm around his shoulders.

Leo looks down, toying with the phone. "Come on, she didn't mean -"

"I think you should do it," Mike says, and Leo looks up at him, his mouth still forming the outlines of words. He fumbles for the beginning of another sentence. "_Excuse_ me?"

"Yeah," Mike says. "Do it as a phone interview." Leo stares at him. "Hey, my first crazy idea worked pretty well."

"Phone interview..." Mike can see Leo turning the idea over in his head. "What would be the point, though? I still can't tell her anything."

"Well, it's not about _you_, bro," Mike says. "It's about -" He makes an expressive gesture. "- _the artistic process._"

"I don't know," Leo says.

"Just think about it, okay?" Mike rubs Leo's opposite shoulder. "It's good publicity. For the _art_," he adds, when Leo's mouth goes thin. He stands up. "Well, I've got homework to finish."

He skips out of the room, and hopes that Leo won't be too quick to dismiss the opportunity.

* * *

Raph is brooding in his den of misery.

At least, that's how Mike would describe it.

He's sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room, cleaning his sai. They're not dirty, because he hasn't needed to use them in a while, but he's cleaning them anyway. The familiar shape of the blades in his hands helps distract him from the messy tangle in his head.

It's a tangle he'd rather avoid. Emotions tend to spurt out of him, like geysers, seething from a source so deep that _he_ can't even find it. And, sometimes, he likes it better that way.

Because when he spelunks for the wellspring of anger, of hurt, of wrenching things he can't even name… sometimes he doesn't like what he finds.

Raph suspects that if he tries to put his finger on why he's so angry at Leo, he won't like what he's pointing to.

So he tells himself that he's just fed up with Leo's reticence, with his uncharacteristically deferential attitude, with the way he seems to cling to the idea of himself as _not good enough_.

Leo _never_ thinks he's good enough. But the thing about Leo is, when he thinks he's not good enough, it just makes him work harder.

Usually.

Then the thing with the Shredder's spaceship, and Leo's inferiority complex made him totally flip out. And now, he's become this half-Leo, who tells people he isn't good enough and then asks them to forgive him for it.

That's not the Leo Raph knows.

That's a _quitter_.

And Raph _hates_ quitters, because he sees that in himself, sees that if he can't be the best at something he'd rather not play at all, and – no, _no_, he's not going to think about that.

His fingers clench between the prongs of his sai. The rounded blades reflect distorted slivers of his face.

_And that's not even the real reason._

He feels it, knows that this runs deeper than _why can't you be more like your brother_ (a thing Splinter never said, a thing Raphael always heard anyway).

He feels himself sinking down into those dark thoughts, and then Splinter calls him to his lessons, and he has another distraction, a way to keep himself afloat in the floodwaters of his consuming spirit.

For a little while.


	5. Building Bridges

Chapter Four – Building Bridges

"Perfect," Splinter says. In reality, he has no idea whether the details of Raphael's recitation were correct, and he knows that Raphael knows it. Splinter taught his sons how to learn, and now all four of them are aware that their own knowledge, at least in certain areas, is greater than his. But they recite their lessons to him anyway, and they pretend that he is still the teacher, that it is themselves who are being instructed.

It is a charade. But everyone is learning, so no one says anything.

They bow to one another, and then Raphael stands and walks away.

Splinter remains, kneeling on the floor, only turning his head to watch his two youngest sons. Now that Donatello has chosen to remove the wooden partition - a development he was glad to see - he can easily watch what goes on in that corner of the Lair.

Shortly after finishing his math problems, Michelangelo had carried another kitchen chair into Donatello's workspace, and now the two of them are ensconced with the computer, talking quietly but animatedly.

Splinter is curious about what they're doing, but he refrains from getting up to find out. They are no longer children, to be watched over every minute. If they want to share their activities with him, they will. And if not, he will leave them to their privacy.

He turns away, and raises his eyes to the catwalks. Leonardo is standing at the railing, looking down at him.

Splinter lifts his brows, questioning, and Leonardo flips easily over the rail to land in a loose crouch on the floor below. He rises, and approaches to a respectful distance.

"Master Splinter," he says. "If you're not busy... I'd like to talk to you now."

"Of course," Splinter says.

Leonardo glances towards where his brothers are working. "Privately?"

Splinter rises, leaning on his new cane, and moves towards his chamber. Leonardo follows behind him, and they seat themselves on the freshly-woven tatami inside.

Splinter waits, but Leonardo does not speak. "What is on your mind, my son?"

Leonardo pinches a loose thread on his kneepad, then leaves it alone. "I have... a strange dilemma, Sensei."

Splinter is silent. Some of his sons need prompting, to help them make sense of their thoughts, but Leonardo expresses himself most eloquently when given time to untangle the words on his own.

"My carvings," Leonardo begins. "They are... unexpectedly popular." He risks a smile.

"Does this concern you?" Splinter asks.

Leonardo shakes his head. "Not... not that, exactly. Sensei -" He contemplates the ceiling for a moment. "A journalist wants to interview me about them." He quickly recounts a conversation with April. "Mike thinks I should do it."

"What do you think?" Splinter asks.

Leonardo sighs. "It's - this is all new to me, Sensei. I don't know how to find the balance." He picks again at the loose thread, then catches himself and rests his hands on his thighs. "I want this to be successful, because I know how useful the money will be... but interviews, biographies - they're _exposure_. I'm afraid it'll go too far, and..." He trails off, waiting for a response.

Splinter quashes the impulse to say _no, you must not reveal yourself_. Leonardo knows this well, would not do such a thing without good reason. "An interview would be a great risk." He brings up the point to elicit his son's thoughts on the matter, thoughts he has surely already had. "You would have to show yourself to this journalist, and trust her to report only your words."

"Mike already solved that," Leonardo says. "He said I could do it as a phone interview." His mouth twitches. "Sensei, I would _never_ do a face-to-face interview like that."

_Of course._ Leonardo has not only considered the problem, he has found a solution to it. Splinter waits, fully expecting that Leonardo will elaborate on his plan.

"I would have to use April's phone," Leonardo says, "since the shell-cells only call each other... but that's not a problem, because if I was a human trying to stay anonymous I still wouldn't use my own phone, because it could be traced." He watches his father's reaction. "I would be very careful what I said..."

There is something about his gaze... "Leonardo," Splinter says slowly. "Are you asking my advice, or my permission?"

Leonardo looks surprised. "Both. I wouldn't run off and do something like this without..." He frowns. "Is something wrong, Master?"

Splinter averts his gaze as he says, "You do not need my permission any longer, my son."

Leonardo does not respond. When Splinter looks back, Leonardo is staring at him, stunned. "Sensei, no..."

"You must make your own decisions now," Splinter says gently. "You are -" He stops when Leonardo rubs a hand across his eyes. "My son..."

"It's like April said." Leonardo looks at his father with an expression of misery. "It's never the same..."

Splinter furrows his brow. "What is this, my son? What did she tell you?"

"She said, that when you go away, and you come back, your parents, they're not -" He closes his eyes against the tears. "Sensei, I'm sorry. I know I needed to go away. But I want to come _back_ now. I want to come _back_..."

Splinter moves forward on his knees, and puts his arms around his son. "Leonardo... it is not because of your journey that I tell you this."

Leonardo sniffs. "Then...?"

"You and your brothers turned eighteen this summer," Splinter reminds him. "You are no longer children. I will give you my advice, if you ask for it, but it is no longer my place to give permission."

"Sensei," Leonardo says. "I'm asking for your advice."

Splinter runs his hand slowly up and down Leonardo's arm, as he thinks. "You have obviously given this some thought," he says, "as it is not your way to enter situations without thinking about them carefully. I advise you to continue to use your gifts - of strategy, and of artistic creation - in whatever way you think will be best for yourself and for your family."

Leonardo sits quietly inside his father's embrace, and considers this. "That's not really advice, Sensei," he says finally.

"I do not think you are seeking advice," Splinter says, and Leonardo turns to look at him. "I think you have already made a decision, and you are seeking validation."

"Master Splinter -"

"And in seeking this validation," Splinter goes on, "you have made no decision at all, as you will simply do what I advise." He draws back, so he can see his son better. "You are used to making the final decision in battle," he says. "You must learn to make the final decision in life as well."

"Sensei..." Leonardo looks at him with deep worry etched in his face. "You're talking like you're going to _die_."

Splinter puts a reassuring hand on Leonardo's arm. "I do not intend to die soon," he says. "But I will not have done my duty as a father, if I do not teach you everything you need to know when I am gone."

Leonardo's eyes turn sad and distant, looking at him as though he's already halfway into the grave. "Is it because of the ghosts?"

"Leonardo," Splinter says, almost with an edge to his voice. "I have been teaching you these things for many years. But if you do not learn _this_ lesson, if you are not able to apply my teachings in my absence, then I have wasted my time."

Leonardo squares his shoulders. "You haven't wasted your time, Sensei."

"I am glad to hear it." Splinter moves back, resting his hands in his lap. "Now. What have you decided?"

"I have decided to think about it some more," Leonardo says, "because you taught me not to make decisions hastily and I'm sure the journalist can wait a little longer."

Splinter nods. "Good." He softens at the rigidity in Leonardo's face, his posture. "Leonardo... I too wish for this endeavor to be successful. I trust that you will find the balance."

"Thank you, Sensei," Leonardo says. "For... the vote of confidence."

Splinter returns Leonardo's bow. He will not validate his sons' choices anymore, but he will never hesitate to express approval of their characters.

* * *

Mike is vaguely aware of Raph finishing his recitation, and his keen ninja senses register Leo and Sensei going into Splinter's room together, but he doesn't really notice any of this because he's busy watching what Don is typing.

He jabs a finger at the computer screen. "Make it bigger."

"_Bigger?_" Don moves the mouse away before Mike can grab it and resize the font himself. "He's not _blind_, Mikey."

"I like big font," Mike says.

"Fine." Don swiftly highlights the text and enlarges it so it fills the screen. "There. Big enough?"

"Big enough." Mike sits back in his chair. "See, isn't that better?"

Don shakes his head. "Whatever you say, Mikey." He poises his fingers over the keys. "So, now that we've spent twenty minutes arguing over the _title_, would you like to suggest what should go next?"

"Battle strategies," Mike replies. "No, wait." He catches Don's wrist, preventing him from typing. "Misdirection schemes." He puts a finger to his lips. "No, new rules for division of housework."

Don raises a brow, waiting for him to make up his mind.

"Uh..." Mike says. "How about a table of contents?"

Don sighs and saves the document.

"What are you two boneheads up to?"

"Hey, Raph." Mike grins up at his brother. "We're writing a situation report."

Raph looks to Don.

"Leo has been trying to catch up on what happened while he was gone," Don says, "and we haven't been doing a very good job of helping him do that, so -" he gestures to the screen "- we're getting it all down in writing."

"Excellent explanation, my dear Donatello," Mike says. He turns back to Raph. "Wanna help?"

Raph's mouth twitches, as he decides which of the many possible declinatory responses he will say aloud. "No."

Mike shrugs. "Suit yourself." He taps Don's hand. "Write that Raph has been trying to break his complaining habit, and he wants somebody to stomp on his foot every time he says something negative."

"Write that we found out Mike's allergic to Doritos and he's not allowed to eat 'em anymore," Raph says.

"Guys -" Don starts.

"Seriously, Donnie," Raph says. "You got anything _useful_ you want done? I'm bored outta my mind."

Don bites his lip. "I don't..."

"_Anything_," Raph says. When Don still hesitates, he crosses his arms. "Really? There's _nothing_ needs doin' around here?"

"There's the access tunnel," Don says slowly. "I didn't want to ask anyone else to do it, but..."

"I'm on it," Raph says.

Mike watches Raph stride across the room and dive into the pool, and then he keeps watching the diminishing ripples until Don touches his shoulder.

"He'll be fine," Don says. "It's been over a month since anything has happened."

"Yeah." Mike turns back towards the computer, and re-reads what they've written. "Okay. Start with chores rotation."

Don types the header, and makes it bold and underlined before Mike even asks.

Mike raises his thinking-finger, then begins to dictate. "Part one, chores assigned based on ability. Point A: Tech work is done by Don, except for projects assigned to other people at his discretion. Point B: Cooking is done by Mikey, and any food prepared by other people is to be eaten at your own risk." He keeps going, trying to remember everything, to get it down in some kind of logical order. He racks his brains for the details of how things worked, for the mind-knowledge that had gotten lost under the body-knowledge of just _doing_ it. He pauses as Leo comes out of Splinter's room, his head down and pace slow, and then resumes, talking as fast as Don can type.

Which is pretty fast.

In Part Two ("Chores Everybody Hates But Which Need To Be Done Anyway"), he covers the thorny question of who has to clean the bathrooms, goes over upkeep of the training equipment and spare weapons, and explains the new procedures for that endless task known as Washing The Dishes.

He gets down into an enumeration of vehicle-maintenance responsibilities (not very relevant right now, but he hopes it will become important again in the future), and then, somewhere around Point G, he just trails off.

Don catches up to the end of his sentence, then glances behind them. "What?"

"Donnie..." Mike says. "He hasn't come up."

Don looks at him. Then he looks at the pool. Then he bolts out of his chair, crosses the floor, and dives headfirst into the water.

* * *

Raph floats motionlessly, his dark skin blending into the cloudy greenish water.

The water ripples around him, currents from the river beyond the grating, and the tails of his mask stir, twisting behind his head.

He hangs there, his feet dangling down, his body supported by the cradling water.

Then other ripples, pushing downwards from above, and he lifts his head and opens his eyes.

Don is swimming down towards him, and he frowns in irritation. He makes a gesture - _What do you want? _- and then Don has reached his level and righted himself and is gesturing back.

_Are you okay?_

Their dive-sign isn't complicated enough to give a satisfactory answer to that. Raph moves his arms, pushing himself away from Don, then scissors his legs and rises towards the surface.

Mikey is crouching by the edge of the pool, watching him worriedly. Raph shakes the water off his head and waits for Don to catch up.

"Geez, Donnie," he says, as soon as his brother breaks the surface. "Can't a guy get a little peace?"

Don glares at him. "Do you _enjoy_ giving people heart attacks, Raphael?"

Raph rolls his eyes. "It was only fifteen freakin' minutes."

Don turns, grabs the edge of the floor, and hauls himself out of the water. "Yes, I can't imagine _any_ reason why I would have been worried."

Raph gets out on the opposite side of the pool. "Not my fault you're paranoid."

"No, Raph," Don returns. "Of course it's not your fault, if anyone is dumb enough to _care_ about you."

"Whatever," Raph mutters. "I couldn't open it, by the way." He brushes the beaded water off his arms. "I was gonna try again, but if you don't trust me not to drown myself I guess I just won't bother." He turns his back to them. "I'll be in the dojo. If anybody _cares_."

He stalks away, intending to beat up on the sandbag for a while. It will probably only make him angrier, but at least he'll be punching a sack of dirt and not one of his brothers.

* * *

Nobody is happy at dinner. They're not happy with each other and they're not happy with the food.

Mike watches his brothers poke at the plain pasta, the limp vegetables, and he knows what he wants to do with the money.

* * *

Later in the evening, Mike knocks on Leo's door.

"Yes?"

He pokes his head in. "Hey - I'm gonna go visit April. You wanna come?"

"Ah, no." Leo glances towards a half-carved and still-unidentifiable animal on his shelf. It's bigger than any of the ones Mike has seen, and looks like it still might be when Leo is done with it. "I should finish this."

"'Kay," Mike says. He backs out, grabbing the edge of the door to return it to its former mostly-closed position.

"Mikey..."

Mike moves forward again, the door swinging at the end of his outstretched arm, sweeping across his field of vision to reveal his brother looking thoughtfully at the shelf.

At the carving, and at his phone.

Leo turns his head, just enough to look at Mike again. "Tell her I'll do it."

Mike smiles. "Sure thing, bro."

* * *

April opens the window. "You know, I should really just install a flap."

"Why?" Mike asks, unfolding himself over the sill. "The window's perfectly good."

"Right," she says, pulling the sash down and drawing the curtains. "Because knocking is only a formality."

He grins at her. "You bet."

She sighs inwardly. As much as she loves her mutant friends, she doesn't so much love coming home to find them already hanging out in her living room.

"Well," she says, gesturing him into the kitchen, "maybe I'll just put a sign up. 'O'Neil Home for Wayward Mutants'."

"Aw, don't do that," Mike says. "Then I might have to share."

"A thing I'm sure you have no experience with," she teases, offering him a bowl of popcorn. She'd been about to get comfortable on the couch and watch a DVD, but instead she pulls out a chair and sits down. "So? I hardly ever see you alone."

"Secret mission," Mike confides. He tosses a handful of popcorn into his mouth and sits in the chair opposite her. As he chews, he reaches into his belt and withdraws a stack of money. He lays the bills on the table between them.

"Is it legal?" she asks.

He blinks at her. "Huh?"

"Whatever you want me to buy," she says. "Is it legal?"

"Come on, April," he says, though it's clear he's not taking the question too seriously. "If I wanted something illegal, I wouldn't _buy_ it. That just shows lack of commitment."

She raises a brow, and he sobers. "No, totally legal," he says. "It's food."

She reaches for the notepad tucked into the odds-and-ends holder at the end of the table.

"It's only one thing," he says, and she retracts her hand, looking at him curiously. "You know that fruit basket you brought us?"

She nods. "Sure."

"Best thing I ever ate in my life." He pushes the stack of money forward. "Can you get us another one?" He glances down. "I don't know how much..."

He watches in dismay as she takes the money and counts out fully half of it before handing back the remaining bills. "Oh..." he says faintly. "Okay..."

"Are you sure about this, Mikey?" April asks. She keeps her hand where he can still see the money. "I could get you fruit from the grocery store; it would be a lot cheaper..."

"No," he says. "I want the fancy stuff."

"Anything in particular?" she asks.

He thinks. "Make sure it has those peaches. And," he grimaces, "no lemons."

"Okay," she says, and slips the folded bills into her pocket. "I'll bring you the change."

Mike swipes his half of the money from the table, and puts it back in his belt. "Man," he says. "And I thought fighting Foot ninjas was hard. This economy thing is _murder_."

"It hurts less, the more you do it," she says.

"Uh, yeah," he says. "Isn't that what Master Splinter told _you_, about your training?"

She has the good grace to look embarrassed. "I should get back to that," she says. "I mean, if you guys are..."

"Yeah, totally," he says. "We miss having you around."

"You mean you miss _laughing_ at me," she says, but without any ire.

"Well," he says, "you're funny." He reaches again for the popcorn. "So, what movie are we watching?"

She raises a brow. "Who is 'we'? And what makes you think there's a movie?"

"Uh, me, you, and the open empty DVD box on your coffee table."

"Maybe I already watched it," she returns.

"Yeah," he says, "but who makes popcorn _after_ they watch a movie?"

She takes a few kernels for herself, possibly the last ones she'll manage to get. "It's in black and white."

"Dudette," he says, "I am so starved for TV I do not even care. If it's got sound and moving pictures, I'm watching it."

"All right," she says, giving up on the popcorn. "But you had better get your own damn box of tissues."

* * *

April would never, ever date Michelangelo - not even if he was human, not even if he was ten years older - but she can't deny she likes watching movies with him. The way he gets viscerally involved in films, the way he reacts to them without any kind of inhibition or embarrassment, makes the whole movie-watching experience better.

And, somehow, it makes the experience of being his friend better. To his opponents in battle, he is a warrior. To the people he helps in passing, a half-glimpsed rescuer. But to her, he is a whole person, with just as many facets of being, quirks of personality, and contradictory moods as anybody else.

Still, she can't understand how he can fearlessly face down a small army bent on killing him, and yet come completely unglued at a story of unrequited love.

She hopes his enemies never find out his secret weakness.

"Oh, man," Mike says. The credits have rolled, they've picked themselves up from each other's shoulders, and his nose has mostly stopped running. "What time is it?"

"It's after midnight," she tells him.

"Yeah, I gotta get home." He scoops up his dirty tissues and goes to deposit them in the garbage can. "Takes longer to get back than it used to, and morning training waits for no Turtle."

"Okay," she says, standing up to see him out. "Travel safe."

He moves to the window, then turns back to her. "How do I look? I can't go out all smeary-faced, just in case I _do_ run into some Foot ninjas. It would be mondo embarrassing."

She crosses to him, studies him critically, rubs away a tear stain from below his eye. "You look very scary. _I_ wouldn't mess with you."

He growls at her, playfully.

She smiles. "Good night, Mikey."

He opens the window, and climbs through it to crouch on her fire escape. He looks back at her over his shoulder. "Night, April."

Then he's gone.

She doesn't close the window right away. Instead she closes her eyes, and inhales the crisp night air.

"Oh, one more thing."

She startles, and opens her eyes to see Michelangelo crouching in front of her again.

He graciously ignores her reaction. "Leo said yes."

She tries to unscramble her jolted thoughts. "Huh?"

"To the interview," Mike says. "If the journalist lady will do it over the phone."

"Okay," she says. "I'll find out."

He flashes her a bright grin. "Thanks, April."

Then he is gone again, and there is only the autumn breeze.


	6. A Trojan Horse

Chapter Five – A Trojan Horse

Splinter watches his three older sons at their warm-ups. Michelangelo has gone to stand in the tunnel outside their front door, to wait for Miss O'Neil.

_She had called him the day before, and Donatello had helped him work the new phone. "Splinter-sensei," she had said, formally. "I would like to resume my training."_

He had given her the time when they normally commenced, and she had promised not to be late.

As usual, she is as good as her word.

* * *

"Hey, guys," April says. She catches herself, and remembers to bow to the dojo and to the sensei. "Master Splinter."

"Miss O'Neil," he greets her, with a returning bow. "Please, your starting exercises."

She hesitates, her memory of the routine rusty after so many weeks away, but Mike touches her elbow and prompts her with the first of the stretching exercises.

After that, the sequence falls into place, and as she works through it she can't help noticing that there are an awful lot of old tires in the dojo. There are rows of even columns, a massive heap in the center of the room, inscrutable patterns traced across the floor. She turns to Mike, intending to ask him when and why this happened, but he shakes his head, reminding her that training is not the place for conversation.

When they are warmed up, they go to kneel in front of Master Splinter, and he explains the rules for the morning's training exercise.

April, apparently, will be playing the role of a hostage. Two of the Turtles will act as her captors, while the other two will attempt to rescue her. Each time she is rescued, or manages to escape, the Turtle teams will switch roles.

"Miss O'Neil," Splinter addresses her. "Will you choose the sides?"

Four heads swivel towards her. "Ah…" she says. "How about Don and Mikey rescue me first?"

Mike and Don exchange fist-bumps, and Splinter nods. "Very well. Leonardo, Raphael, take your prisoner to a corner."

"Don't worry, April," Mike assures her, as they all stand up. "You'll be out in no time."

* * *

In the time before the game begins, the minutes allotted for strategizing, Raph and Leo put their heads together.

"What's the plan?" Raph asks.

Leo shrugs. "You tell me."

Raph draws back, not caring whether anybody overhears them. "What the hell, Leo?"

Leo keeps his gaze steady and his voice down. "Raph, if you're going to be the leader when I'm not here, you're going to have to practice doing it when I _am_ here."

"Why?" Raph demands. "So you can watch me screw up, and know how much better you are at it?"

"One minute," Splinter calls.

Leo glances towards where their younger brothers are taking up forward positions. "Tell me your plan, Raph."

Raph narrows his eyes. "Fine. You guard the prisoner, I'll hold the front lines."

"Okay," Leo says, and falls back to cover April.

Raph advances towards the tire heap, and is grateful this is a non-weapons training exercise.

* * *

It doesn't take very long for April to get rescued. Mike comes flying over the tire heap with a joyful shout of "_Banzai!_" and Raph has his hands full preventing him from getting any further. That leaves Don free to penetrate deep into enemy territory, and Leo doesn't have enough hands to fight him off _and_ stop April from making a break for it.

Raph disengages from Mike and makes a dive for her as she sprints past, but she's pretty proud of herself for evading him and arriving safely in the opposite corner. (Well, maybe Mike's pursuing tackle had something to do with it, but she congratulates herself anyway.)

"_Ichi!_" Mike taunts, as he retreats to his side to regroup.

Raph shouts back something else she can't understand, and then they're starting the next round.

The game goes on like that, a bit like doubles tennis with herself as the ball, only with far more body-contact than tennis usually involves. There are grabs, throws, body-checks, and it seems to get rougher with every round, and April just hopes the guys remember that she won't get up so quickly after taking a hit like that.

She skids to a halt as Don lunges to block her path. "Where do you think _you're_ going?" he asks, even though he certainly ought to know, because she's escaped from him five times already.

She tries dodging to the right, but he matches her move. She tries dodging to the left, and finds him already there. She tries feinting at him but he doesn't flinch.

They regard each other. He's bent-legged, a ready stance, poised to counter whatever she does next.

_Well, maybe he won't be expecting THIS…_

She plants her foot on his knee, grabs his shoulders, and tries to vault over him.

It's a good attempt, but it doesn't take Don long to recover. He grabs her waist, and his strength is greater than her momentum, and she's pushed back to the floor. Her feet come down awkwardly, and her leg jams and she sits down hard on her butt.

"Ow!"

"April!" Don leans over her, then turns and raises his hand. "_Yamete! Ai – yamete!_"

All motion stops, as if someone had hit the pause button.

"No, I'm okay," she says. Don crouches and reaches towards her ankle, but she tucks her legs under her and makes to stand up. "I'm fine. It's just my butt."

He still insists on taking her arm as she stands, seeming to think she needs assistance in turning towards Master Splinter, who approaches them rapidly. "Miss O'Neil – are you hurt?"

"No, Sensei," she says, even remembering to use the correct title. She wipes her sweating brow. "I – I could use a break, though."

"Of course," Splinter says. He calls out some command, and the other Turtles release from their frozen positions.

Don tries to lead her towards the wall, but she firmly removes his hand from her arm. "I'm fine," she tells him, for the third time. "I'll just sit down."

He looks befuddled at her intention, and she realizes he doesn't know what it is to have a butt that can suffer injury.

She goes and sits on a small mound of tires.

Don regards her thoughtfully for a moment, and then he rejoins his brothers, and Splinter leads the four of them in some exercise that is way over her head.

* * *

No one addresses her again until training is over and they have exited the dojo.

Leo catches her eye as they walk slowly across the main room. "Staying for breakfast, April?" he asks.

"No," she says, "I've got to get back and open the shop. If I'm not there, nothing gets sold." She flashes him a smile, and after a moment he returns it. "But –"

He seems to catch her intention, because he nods and waves for his brothers to go ahead into the kitchen. They look at him curiously, but don't comment as they move off.

By mutual agreement, she and Leo move in the opposite direction, towards Don's work corner. "I talked to the journalist," she says, in a low voice, because she knows how preternaturally good ninjas are at eavesdropping.

"And?" he asks.

"She's willing to do it as a phone interview," April says, "but only during working hours. Will you be able to come to my place in the daytime?"

She recognizes the little tell, the shift in the skin above and below his mask, as his eyes tick to the side. "Yes," he says. "I can use the tunnel to your basement."

"Well," she says wryly, "since you felt the need to knock a hole in my wall, I'm glad you're at least getting some use out of it."

He blinks and draws back, clearly unsure how annoyed she is about the wanton structural damage, but she shakes her head. "Don't worry about it. Is Friday at 3:00 okay?"

He frowns. "What day is today?"

"It's Tuesday."

He twitches his fingers, some kind of bizarre counting method she's never had the guts to ask about. "I'll be there."

"Okay," she says, and rolls her shoulders. She's sore, sweaty, and before she can take a nice hot shower she still has to walk a little ways through the sewers and climb a ladder in order to get back to her car and go home.

In theory she could shower at the Lair, but she's done that before, after the Shredder had destroyed her building, and something about the arrangement had been so intensely mortifying to her friends that she had resolved never to do it again.

"Do you –" he starts, and gestures towards the door.

"No, thanks." She feints playfully to the side, as though they are still in the dojo game, as though he will try to stop her from escaping, and he gets the joke and smiles.

"See you Friday, April," he says, and then the door closes behind her and it is hard to believe there is a door there at all.

* * *

Mike _can_ be patient.

He _can_.

The basket of fruit is hidden in his room (and the depressingly small amount of change put back with the rest of the money), and he is going _nuts_ trying to keep it a secret until dinnertime.

The only reason he's able to keep his mouth shut through breakfast, is because he knows he has another gift to give today, and that one only has to wait until Leo is…

"I'm going to go jump in the shower," Leo says, standing up and clearing his place.

… until Leo is done being hygienic.

_Damn_ him.

Mike clears his own place and goes to sit on the floor of the main room, to play with Klunk and pretend he isn't watching the bathroom door.

As soon as the door opens, though, the cat is forgotten and Mike is bounding across the room to bounce excitedly in front of his older brother.

Leo watches him warily. "What, Mike?"

"Got something for you," Mike announces. Leo's brow furrows in confusion, but before he can say anything Mike grabs his arm and drags him across the room.

"Mikey, what -?"

Instead of answering, Mike just hauls Leo into the computer corner, and slaps the back of the chair, startling Don from whatever he was doing. "Sorry, Donnie, you're evicted."

Don vacates the chair without complaint, and Mike leans over it to bring up the text file he wants Leo to see.

"We're short on paper," he says, as the program opens, "so you're just gonna have to read it on the computer."

"What?" Leo says blankly, apparently not understanding any of the concepts in Mike's sentence.

"You." Mike seizes Leo's shoulders and puts him bodily in the chair. "Sit. Read."

Leo looks uncertainly at the monitor, and reads the enormous font that takes up almost the entire screen. "New rules of the Hamato family, A.K.A stuff Leo should know about what happened while he was gone. Really important note, all of this is negotiable." He looks up at his two grinning brothers. "Donnie, what is this?"

Mike shakes his head. "See, I told you we should have added another subtitle." He half-sits against the edge of the desk. "It's what it says, bro. It's all the answers you've been looking for and not getting." He rubs his snout. "Well, I mean, maybe not _all_ the answers, but…"

"Thanks, Mikey," Leo says, this time understanding exactly what Mike is trying to say. "I'll read it." He turns back to the computer, then looks down at the keyboard, raising his hand hesitantly. "Um…"

Don leans over him and points at a key. "Down arrow." His finger flicks. "If you go too far, up arrow."

"Thank you," Leo says, and cautiously presses the button, watching as the text scrolls across the screen.

Mike starts to make himself comfortable, but Don looks at him meaningfully and says, "We'll leave you to it, Leo," so he has to get up and go away.

He walks off feeling like a good deed has been done.

* * *

Mike turns from the stove, goes to the kitchen doorway, inhales deeply, and shouts, "Dudes, Sensei, dinner's ready!"

He backs away from the oncoming rush, going to stand proudly by the table. Raph is first into the room, and then everyone else stacks up behind him as he just stands there, staring at the centerpiece.

"Shit," he says finally.

"What's going on?" Don forces his way to the front, and then also stops at the sight of what's on the table. "Oh…"

Mike crinkles his brow, looks again at what he's set out, and realizes what they're thinking. "Dudes, no," he says. He stretches out his hand to rearrange the curled ribbon that adorns the unwrapped basket of fruit. "It's totally legit. I asked April to buy it."

"Wow, Mikey," Don says, breaking through the invisible barrier that seemed to hold them back, and going to his seat. "That's surprisingly thoughtful."

"Come on," Mike says, as the rest of his family goes to their places as well. "Did you really think I was going to blow it on a rocket-powered jet ski? Besides the fact that I can't afford one, I know I'll eventually get one for free if I just bother you enough." He smiles winningly, then turns back to the stove to set out the rest of the dinner.

When the dishes are on the table, he takes his own seat, only to see that nobody has touched anything yet. Well, if they were going to give up prime opportunities for first dibs… He reaches for the basket.

Raph's voice stops him. "Let Leo pick first," he says. "It's really his money."

"No, no," Leo says, with a small smile. "It's Mike's money. Go ahead, Mikey."

Mike reaches again, but this time Raph intercepts his hand. "Leo, I insist."

"No, really," Leo says. "It's fine."

Mike tries a third time, more than happy to grab that beautiful banana he's been thinking about all afternoon, but Raph forces his hand down to the table. "Go on, Leo, pick one."

"Raph," Leo says, and Mike can feel the tension in the room starting to rise. "I said I want Mike to pick first."

Raph leans forward over the table. "And _I_ said, that I want _you_ to pick first."

Leo narrows his eyes, as Mike and Don exchange nervous glances at what they know is coming. "Why is this so important to you?"

"Because I want you to make a damn decision!" Raph slams out of his chair, its legs scraping against the concrete, and stands over them, his fists clenched. "Okay, I can kinda get the dojo thing. But –" he flings a hand towards the ceiling "- how can I trust you to give orders up there, if you can't even pick a damn _fruit_ in your own kitchen?"

"That's not the same thing," Leo says. He doesn't yell, but his voice shakes. "And you know it."

Raph shoves the basket forward. "Pick one."

Leo's shoulders tense, but he keeps his hands in his lap. "No."

Mike looks to Master Splinter, but their father is just sitting there, not saying anything.

"Pick one, Leo!" Raph shouts. "Just _pick_ one!"

"_You_ pick one, Raphael," Leo says. "That's an order."

"Yeah?" Raph rests both hands flat on the table. "You ordering me to pick first?"

"Yes," Leo says.

"Okay." Raph leans forward, looking at the basket. Then he reaches out, grasps the handle, and moves the whole thing to his side of the table. "I'm pickin' all of 'em."

Leo shoves his chair back, stalks around the table, grabs Raph by the upper arm, and propels him out into the main room.

Mike leaps up from his own seat and darts after them, but gets only as far as the doorway before Master Splinter stops him with a sharp, "Michelangelo." He hovers there, looking anxiously outward to see what will happen.

Leo has marched Raph well into the main room, and now he shoves Raph away from himself. As Raph staggers backwards, Leo stands, facing him, his stance squared. "What is this about, Raphael?"

Raph regains his balance, and plants himself exactly where he ended up. "What makes you think it's _about_ anything?"

Leo crosses his arms. "Because you're surpassing even your own rigorous standards of obnoxiousness." He lifts his chin. "And most of the time you just can't be bothered to try that hard."

Raph snorts. "Pots, kettles, similar coloration of."

Leo narrows his eyes. "What are you trying to say, Raph?"

"What I'm saying," Raph says, "is _make a damn effort_, Leo."

Leo throws up his hands. "At _what?_"

"At bein' part of this family!" Raph shouts. "At not bein' so damn wishy-washy!"

"I'm not!"

"You _are_!" Raph takes a step forward. "Where the hell is our brilliant leader, Leo? You leave him in Japan? Or is this mincing around some great new strategy that I'm just too _dumb_ to understand?"

"This new strategy," Leo says, in a low voice, "is called studying the situation, instead of jumping in like a reckless idiot. A thing _you_ were never very good at."

"This ain't about me, Leo," Raph returns, in the same tone.

"It _is_ about you," Leo says. "It's _always_ about you, Raph. You're just too much of a coward to ever admit it."

"I am not!" Raph lunges forward, shoving at Leo.

Mike's eyes dart again to Master Splinter. The rat has joined him in the doorway, but he only stands and watches passively. Mike shares another look with Don, who has been watching the fight over Splinter's head, and then both of them turn back to see what happens next.

"What is it this time, Raph?" Leo asks, as they grapple with one another. "Are you mad because the Lair got destroyed? Because you didn't get to be the hero who brought everyone back together? Because -"

Raph twists suddenly, bringing his shoulder forward and knocking Leo to the floor. "Because it's not _fair!_"

Silence. Raph runs a trembling hand over his head.

"Fuck, Leo," he says. "You almost get us all killed, and you get to go to freakin' _Japan_. The place that Master Splinter always talks about like it's God's fucking Kingdom on Earth. And you _don't_ act like you're happy to have gone and you _don't_ act like you're happy to be back and nothing is ever _good_ enough for you."

Leo stays on the floor, looking up at his brother. "_You_ are good enough, Raph."

Raph makes a slashing gesture through the air. "Yeah? I'm good enough? What the hell do _I_ get when I fuck up?" He points to Leo. "Lectures." His arm swings towards Master Splinter. "And more lectures. None of you have _ever_ thought I was good enough."

Leo props himself up on his elbows. "Raph -"

Raph moves swiftly, kneeling at Leo's side and pressing a finger against his brother's plastron. "I want this, okay? Whatever you learned, I wanna know it. You can't keep holding out on us."

"I told you," Leo says, but without any anger. "I didn't -"

"But you _did_." Raph rises and paces across the room. "You went away angry, you came back - _not_." He turns to face them. "Whatever he said to you... I've been waiting _years_ to hear it."

Another silence, and Mike looks once more to Master Splinter. _Come on, Sensei. You've gotta say something NOW._

"Raph -" Leo pushes himself up into a sitting position. "I can't -"

"You owe it to us, Leo," Raph says. "You said it yourself, that you were doing it for us. Well?" He makes an expansive gesture around the Lair. "I don't see _us_ getting any benefit from it."

"It's not a -" Leo starts.

"It's not what?" Raph demands. "Not _easy? _No shit, Leo! But you're -"

"_I'm doing the best I can!_"

Raph cuts off, and Leo gets slowly to his feet. "You want to know what I learned?" he says. "_That's_ what I learned. _You do the best you can._ You make an effort. Every day, you try harder. But when you've given everything you have, and it's still not good enough, you don't hate yourself for it. You let go of the anger, and you say, 'Today my best will be better'." He regards his brother steadily. "You want to know how to be good enough, Raph?" He pauses, breathes in and out. "_Try harder._"

Raph rolls his eyes, and paces away again.

"Don't turn your back on me, Raphael," Leo says, but Raph refuses to face him. Leo storms forward, grabs Raph's shoulder, and spins him around. "I'm sick of this, Raph," he says, even as Raph pushes him off and falls back into a defensive stance. "I don't know why I'm even bothering. We both know you're _not_ going to try. Deep down, you don't even _want_ to let go of your anger." He keeps his hands at his sides, purposely not reacting as Raph rises into a forward stance. "Because you know what you'll find underneath."

"Shut up, Leo," Raph grits.

Leo ignores him. "_Fear_." At Raph's enraged look, he softens. "I know, Raph. I was there. You're afraid that you won't be good enough, that you'll let down the people you care about, that you'll lose them... and so you put up this smokescreen, so that they won't get close to you and you won't get close to them. But it blinds you, and you don't see that you _are_ losing them, by doing this. And it's hurting you and it's hurting us and it needs to stop." He takes a step forward, heedless of Raph's clenched fists. "Do you remember how we talked, back in August? And I said that I had been wasting our time?" He waits until Raph gives a tiny nod of recognition. "You've been wasting it a lot longer."

"You're full of shit, Leo," Raph ices. "You don't know anything about me."

Leo looks at him sorrowfully. "Then I'm sorry for that. And I wish you would let me learn." He turns on his heel. When he reaches the stairs, he pauses and looks over his shoulder. "Thank you for the basket, Mikey. I'm sorry we couldn't all enjoy it together." Then he disappears, up the stairs and into his room.

And _still_ Splinter doesn't say anything. Raph stays where he is, for a moment, almost vibrating with tension, and then he turns and stalks out of the Lair, slamming the door behind him.

Don gives Mike his "what the hell just happened?" look. Mike shrugs, wide-eyed. Splinter returns to the table and casually starts eating a pear. Don's look intensifies, and Mike feels a crushing need to get away from this Lair, from this family that is obviously not his own, and then the door slams again and he is running through dark tunnels, trying to find his way home.


	7. The Four Fortresses

Chapter Six – The Four Fortresses

Raphael has sat atop the Brooklyn Bridge in every season. He's walked the arch of the Bayonne. He's been up both towers of the GW and all three spans of the Triboro.

Tonight though, his feet carry him over the Williamsburg and onwards across Brooklyn, until he finally stops on a roof in Greenpoint and sits there, lost in thought.

Leo was _wrong_. About _everything_. He was wrong, and any idiot with half a brain could see it.

For one, Raph does not have some deep dark pit of fear lurking within his soul. He snorts at the very idea. Where the hell did Leo pull _that_ one from? Seriously. Which of them was always first to jump into a fight? Which of them had the weapon with the shortest range, the weapon that was only useful if you let the enemy get right up in your face? Which of them had gone out early in the night, into a city full of hostile humans, alone and - he feels a thrill of something that is absolutely _not_ fear - unarmed?

_Afraid_. As _if_.

Conclusion, Leo is an idiot.

And what was that nonsense about a smokescreen? Raph didn't have any weird ulterior motives for being angry, it was just that so many things pissed him off. If there was any smoke blowing around, it was the huge billowing clouds of Leo's own hot air.

Conclusion, Leo is an _idiot_.

Raph gazes moodily over the roofscape.

_So why did his words hurt so much?_

He sighs.

The good thing about living smack in the middle of the city, is that he can get pretty much anywhere in under an hour. The _bad_ thing about living smack in the middle of the city, is that he can't get _away_.

Things had been different while Leo was gone, and not necessarily in a bad way. Raph had kind of liked being the oldest, being the leader. Yeah, it was tough, having to call the shots when they were out at night, having to orchestrate the ongoing ruse where they shared four identities amongst three people, rotating who was "absent", so their enemies wouldn't realize they were one Turtle short. Yeah, it hurt every time some punk Dragon taunted them for their apparent inability to go out as a complete team, for the loss of their mojo as the Fearsome Foursome. But it had felt damn good, proving to Don and Mike that he _could_ be responsible, that he was every bit as capable as Leo.

And then it had all come crashing down, when Leo waltzed back in and immediately Don and Mike turned to _him_ as the leader, even though he sure wasn't acting like one, just because he had that effortless aura of leadership, that air of easy competence that Raph would _never_ have, because he was always only second-best at _everything_. And as good as it had felt to rise into first place while Leo was gone, it hurt just as much to be shoved down again, to have his abilities ignored and wasted, like he was just one of those weak flashlights that got buried in a drawer until the power went out and _something_ had to fill in for the bright incandescents that they took almost for granted until that moment when the electricity failed.

He had hoped it would be different, when Leo came back. He had hoped that Leo would say, "Good job, Raph, you should take turns at being the leader more often." He had hoped that Don and Mike would say, "Look, Leo, look at all these smart plans Raph came up with." He had hoped that Leo would come back so much wiser, so much more incisive, that his own leadership skills would pale in comparison and he would be glad to hand over the reins.

But none of these had happened. Leo hadn't come back any better, or any more willing to recognize that somebody besides himself might have leadership qualities, or even any easier to get along with. He had made some weak overtures, offers to share the title of leader, but it was crap. No one who offered to _share_ leadership deserved to be a leader, and so no one could propose a thing like that and still have the power they offered to share.

Maybe Raph should have staged a coup right then and there. Maybe he should have kept the chalk, told Leo he _would_ lead that mission. That mission, and every mission thereafter.

But Don and Mike would only have laughed, ignored him, and kept following Leo, because Leo had that indefinable _something_ that clung to him even in his weakest moments, and it was the essence of leadership, and it was impossible to steal.

And deep down, Raph knew that it was impossible to _find_, too, no matter how far he ran.

But he had run anyway, because he remembered how disconcertingly _peaceful_ the Lair had been while Leo was far away, and now, as he sits on the roof in Greenpoint, he wonders if maybe the two of them aren't meant to be near each other.

* * *

Mike sits on the cliffs at Fort Tryon, and wonders why he always, _always_, messes it up.

What was he thinking, he asks himself, bringing in that basket of fruit? It was only looking for trouble. Didn't he remember how they had fought over the _first_ one? Of _course_ a second one would only end in angry words and somebody running out.

He shakes his head. No. Raph was _looking_ for a fight. If it wasn't the fruit basket, it would have been something else.

But then, Mike thinks, who was it that told Raph it would be a _good idea_ to pick a fight with Leo?

He presses his face deeper into his kneepads.

It just sucks so much.

He doesn't know if things will ever be like they used to. He doesn't know if it's even _possible_ to go back to that, but he sure as shell wants to try, and everything he does only seems to make it worse.

_What am I doing out here?_

The Hudson laps gently below him, neither knowing nor caring that a mutant turtle is sitting on its ancient shores, and Mike wonders if anybody would care if he threw himself to that indifferent river and went wherever it wanted to take him.

Jersey, probably.

He shakes his head, and decides to quit being melodramatic. He's never been good at it.

What he _is_ good at, usually, is making things better, and he can't understand why lately everything is going wrong.

He raises his head. Across from him, the crescent moon is setting behind the Palisades. For a moment, he thinks semi-seriously about swimming the river, just for that little secret thrill he gets when he crosses one of the imaginary lines that humans insisted on drawing all over the world.

But it doesn't seem worth it. Not when bodies of water still make him nervous, not when he doesn't have a brother to share a grin and a high-three with when they reach the other side, not when everything is going so horribly wrong that he can't imagine enjoying a childish game of sneaking into forbidden territory.

It's not even forbidden anymore. Not since they turned eighteen, and Master Splinter told them that all the rules had expired and they were free to do what they wanted.

Mike had never thought freedom would be so awful.

He had seen Master Splinter holding back, waiting for Leo and Raph to settle their own differences, remaining silent even when it became clear that there wasn't going to be any compromise, any calm resolution of an argument that had been stupid from the beginning.

And Mike is terrified that there never _will_ be a resolution – that, without Splinter to enforce reasonable speaking voices and encourage open sharing of feelings, the fighting between Leo and Raph will just get worse and worse until something unfixable happens.

He doesn't even let himself think about what that might be.

He just desperately wants to turn things around before they get to that point, and he's afraid to try, because he's terrified he'll precipitate the very thing he's trying to prevent.

Maybe he should be like Master Splinter, and let Leo and Raph sort out their own problems. Maybe the _real_ problem, is that they've always used their Sensei as a crutch, as the arbitrator of their relationship, and they've never learned how to deal with each other directly. Maybe there will be one magical breakthrough moment, and they will suddenly understand each other, and then everything will be sunshine and roses.

Yeah, and maybe the Hudson will flow backwards, and he'll walk north on its dancing surface, and the Canadians will greet him as their King.

He shifts on the sharp-angled rocks.

Well, maybe it's a little too much to ask for, for Leo and Raph to work things out by themselves, and reach agreement on any of the many subjects on which they have differences of opinion.

But, then again, maybe Master Splinter isn't the only one who can act as a neutral third party to their fights.

Mike pulls himself over the edge of the cliff, and disappears into the shadows of the park.

* * *

Leonardo lies on his bed, in the dark, a deep ache in his chest.

He had spoken hurtful words, but he had spoken the truth. And he knows all too well that sometimes one needed to confront ugly truths about oneself, in order to grow as a person.

He only wishes that Raph could have found an easier path to self-enlightenment.

But then, he thinks, maybe there _is_ no easy path.

He rolls out of bed, moves across the room, reaches out to touch the mostly-carved dragon on his shelf. It's a larger version of the gift he had made for Raph. It's more detailed and more skillfully done, but he doesn't _feel_ about it what he felt for those early attempts, those apologies and promises and expressions of love fashioned from the wood of their ancestors' homeland.

He rests his hand on the dragon's neck. "Please," he whispers, and trails his fingers up to rub his thumb over the half-finished scales of the dragon's face. "If there _is_ any magic... help my brother."

He is silent for a moment, in the dark.

"Help _me_."

He waits, breathes slowly, but nothing happens.

There is no easy path.

He falls back into bed, and doesn't get up again until morning.

* * *

Don sits in the kitchen, contemplating the basket of fruit.

Still life.

_"You're really not going to get involved?" he had asked, as he watched his father calmly eat a pear._

_"No," Splinter had said._

_"But –" Don had started._

_Splinter had turned his head slowly, fixing Donatello with his gaze. "It will be all right," he said. "They love each other too much to continue fighting this way. When no one stops them, they will stop themselves."_

Splinter had eaten the entire pear, right down to the stem, and then he had left. Donatello had kept standing there, and then he had sat, looking at the fruit and not eating it. He can't bring himself to eat it alone. But he can't let it out of his sight, either, because even though there have still been no eerie occurrences since that second letter was delivered, he can't take the chance that something will happen to the basket. He would be disappointed for himself, to lose the special treat, but mostly he just doesn't think he could stand to see the look on Mikey's face, if his gift got ruined before it could be enjoyed.

So he sits there, watching the fruit, thinking about Splinter's words.

He's doubtful, at best, that Leo and Raph will just... _stop fighting_. Fighting has been the predominant feature of Leo and Raph's relationship since… well, pretty much as long as he can remember. They fought over toys. They fought over privileges. They had a long series of arguments about which of them was better at drawing, at katas, at reading, running, standing on one foot… and then, ultimately, about which of them was better overall. They fought over how to fight against their enemies and they fought over how to express and resolve a disagreement within the family. They fought over irritating aspects of each other's personalities and sometimes they very presumptuously fought over their younger brothers. Don had patiently tried to explain to them, more than once, that he was neither a resource to be allocated nor an incompetent to be spoken up for. And yet he most often found himself on the sidelines, watching himself get used as a pawn in his older brothers' arguments.

He is really tired of it.

And he is tired, too, of being the peacemaker, of listening to both of his older brothers complain about how unreasonable the other is, of constantly trying to nudge each of them towards seeing that the other has valid points.

He sits, and watches, and thinks, and knows that probably he should go upstairs and talk to Leo. It would require quitting his vigil over the fruit, but really, which is more important?

He can't seem to make himself do it.

This is still life, still _his_ life, and he no longer wants to go through it as the person who puts away his own feelings to become an empty vessel for everyone else's, nothing more than a convenient pit that swallows down negativity and returns the distilled echoes of what's good and useful in it.

It makes him feel dead inside. Hollow. And he isn't going to do it anymore.

So he just sits in the kitchen, watching the fruit, using the space inside himself to sort out his own feelings.

Mike comes back after midnight, and sits heavily in one of the wooden chairs.

"Have you just been sitting here the whole time?" Mike asks.

Don nods. "Mm."

Mike looks at him quizzically. "You didn't talk to Leo?"

"No," Don says, and something rises up in him, at this implication that it's his job to go around solving everybody else's problems. "Why?"

"Uh…" Mike's eyes skim around the room, as though he's checking where he is. "It's kinda what you do."

Don sighs. Mike doesn't mean anything malicious. He just sees Leo and Raph hurting, and, as usual, forgets that his quietest brother hurts too. "I don't know what to say anymore."

"Dude," Mike says. "If _you_ don't know what to say, then we're all doomed."

Don absently loosens a grape from the bunch tucked into the basket, and pops it in his mouth. "I don't know where I get this reputation for wisdom," he says. "I've been trying for eighteen years to get them to stop fighting. They still fight. Ergo, the things I say are ineffective." He notices that Mike is giving him an odd look. "What?"

"You're eating the grapes," Mike says.

Don looks down. Judging by the number of denuded stalks on the bunch, he ate a further three grapes while he was talking. He looks up again. "Did you want us to not eat this?"

"I wanted us to all eat it together," Mike says in a small voice.

Don puts his hands under the table, so he'll be more likely to notice if one of them tries to steal any more fruit. "So did I," he says, with no lack of sympathy. "But look at it this way – if Leo and Raph are going to act like children, they don't get to stay up late and have dessert."

Mike glances at the clock, then back at the basket. "We can't punish them like that," he says. "Donnie, we're their little brothers…"

"We're the same age, Mike."

Mike looks up at him, wide-eyed. They all _know_ they're the same age, but mostly they pretend they aren't. Acting like there's at least a few months of difference makes it okay for Leo to give orders and for Mike to take them, justifies the comfortable hierarchy that they've all fitted themselves into. Without that, Leo is just a bossy, self-important egotist, and Mike is the submissive co-quad who lets him get away with it.

Don's elbows creep up to rest on the edge of the table. "I'm not saying the system hasn't worked out well, for the most part. But it really is just a system, and when systems stop working they need to be rebuilt." He looks steadily at his brother. Not his younger brother, anymore, but his equal. "We're all adults, Mike. And we all need to start acting like it."

"I don't know how..." Mike says.

Don smiles, and reaches out to pat his brother's arm. "It's okay, Mikey. We learned our ABC's together. We learned ninjutsu together. We faced down puberty together and we'll do this together too."

Mike's eyes trace the grain of the table.

And as Don waits for Mike to say something, to express his worries about the changing situation, he realizes he's doing it again.

He's becoming the pit.

But somehow, right now, he doesn't mind. If this new system is going to work, it's going to be because they all recognize that they wound up in their roles based on personality and not on age. Leo is the leader because he's the best at leading, not because he might be slightly older than the rest of them.

And, Don reflects, it's better that way. To him, at least, merit far outranks seniority as a reason to put someone in a position of leadership.

Likewise, Don is the listener because he's good at it.

And if this new system is going to work, none of them can shirk their duties.

He sighs inwardly as he realizes that he _is_ going to have to help Leo and Raph sort out their problems with each other.

"What does it mean?" Mike asks, and Don comes back to the present. "Being an adult?"

"Mikey," Don says, "I wish I knew."

He thinks it means that Leo and Raph need to learn to have rational conversations with each other. He thinks it means that when they get into a shouting match, he and Mike have the right to get involved, to take sides, instead of waiting for their brothers to beat each other into an agreement, accepting whatever decision they make, and listening to them complain about it afterwards.

But he also thinks it means that he and Mike have the right to no longer be the compliant domestic servants, the unopinionated support services, to their older brothers.

And so he doesn't know whether his role as listener compels him to sit and patiently absorb his brothers' misdirected frustration, or whether he's allowed to ignore them until they start taking some of the responsibility for resolving their own disputes.

It wouldn't be shirking, exactly. It would just be refusing to work under unreasonable conditions.

_But if I do nothing, the conditions will probably only get worse..._

It's late, he's tired, and he doesn't want to continue sitting here, being the receptacle for Mike's anxieties and the watchdog of that stupid basket.

"I'm going to bed," he says.

It doesn't even occur to him to say that they're still not too old to co-sleep. But whether because of his omission or because Mike simply does not want to share his bed that night, Don finds himself alone until morning.


	8. An Empty Room

Chapter Seven – An Empty Room

Sometime after moonset, Raph finds himself crouching on a roof in Brooklyn Heights, studying Gary's house and trying to see what Mike saw there six weeks ago.

He doesn't see anything. Just another house, like all the others in the row. Nothing that marks it as different. Nothing to indicate that the people inside are anybody special.

_It's just a kid our age, and his mom._

He's asked Casey about this, about what it was like to be an only child.

_"I dunno. All us neighborhood kids were at each other's houses so often, it was like havin' thirty siblings and a dozen sets a' parents."_

_"But they musta gone home eventually, right?"_

_"Yeah, well... It was nice, I guess, just bein' alone with my folks. But I don't think I woulda liked it as much, if my friends hadn't been right outside whenever I wanted t' see 'em again."_

Raph _likes_ being part of a foursome. He genuinely does. It's a good, safe feeling, to be involved in that. He can't quite believe that anyone would ever love him voluntarily, so he's desperately grateful to have three people who are more or less obligated to love him, and whom he can love in return without fear of betrayal.

On the other hand, it makes him feel kind of like a freeloader. What right does he have to simply _expect_ that his brothers will love him, for no more reason than because they're family? They're not even really related. They were thrown together by chance, and to him that's a pretty dumb reason to love somebody.

But dumb or not, he _does_ love his brothers, and sometimes he thinks that they even genuinely love _him_. And that makes him need to get away, to be alone, because the guilt and disbelief build up in him, and he can't love hard enough to repay his brothers for loving him back in spite of all his flaws and failures.

But the problem is that he _can't_ get away. He's so intricately bound up with his brothers, that even a short absence only replaces the problems of being with them with the problems of _not_ being with them. And so he's caught, like a ping-pong ball, endlessly bouncing back and forth between the overwhelmingness of being close to his brothers, and the emptiness of being far from them, and the happiness he finds in either state is fleeting and frightening and always sends him back to the other extreme.

He doesn't want this happiness. These aren't the kinds of things he should be happy _about_, so when he _does_ feel happy about them the joy only sours, turning to misery and self-hatred. He doesn't want to be happy on his own, with no one to care about, and he doesn't want to be happy as part of a unit, where he never quite feels like an entire person. But he can't have both and he can't have neither and it is so, _so_ hard to find the balance.

He's jealous of Casey for getting it right - or, maybe, just for growing up in a situation where it was _possible_ to get it right. But at the same time, he knows that Casey is jealous of him too, because there is nothing in the world that Casey had wanted more than a brother, and the mutual envy makes everything even more confusing and unsettling. How can he be so unhappy in a family his best friend would have given anything to be a part of?

He doesn't _deserve_ this family.

And he feels bad, for making them put up with him.

But he has nowhere else to go, and so sooner or later he will have to go back to them.

But first, he decides to see how far up Long Island he can get, before daylight catches him.

* * *

Leo wakes up, and, even though it's morning, it's still dark.

It's _always_ dark, in the Lair, until they put the lights on. Leo thinks nothing of it as he rises, flips the light switch, and reaches for his gear.

_He had panicked, every morning at the Ancient One's house, when the sun came through the window and woke him. His sleep-fogged mind always registered it as a searchlight, as people coming to take him... He'd gotten used to it, eventually, but it was an uneasy habituation, and it had taken him no time at all to get used to waking up in the dark again._

Even as he dresses for practice, he dreads going downstairs. He's not proud of how he comported himself last night. He's not above apologizing, but he knows there's an even chance Raph won't even bother to acknowledge him, and he knows how unpleasant it is to be stuck in training with someone who's pretending you're not there.

He hopes Master Splinter doesn't set them to teamwork exercises.

Or sparring.

He goes downstairs with shoulders slumped, bows mechanically to the dojo, starts his exercises.

He's the first to arrive, as he often is, and those few minutes alone in the sanctity of the dojo go a long way towards centering and calming him. Training happens, regardless of who's angry at whom, and anyone who brings their attitude onto the mats is just asking to be hit over the head with Splinter's walking stick. Leo is depressingly certain that his fight with Raph will continue later, but if Raph disrespects the temporary truce of morning practice by blowing off Leo's apology, there's no question as to which of them will be doing extra flips.

"Good morning, Leonardo."

Leo turns and bows. "Good morning, Sensei."

Not even a mention of yesterday's fight. This is not the place for it.

Don arrives, slapping himself awake, and then Mike comes in, uncharacteristically quiet, and separately they work through their starting exercises.

Halfway through the routine, Leo starts casting glances at the door, wondering why Raph is late.

Raph is rarely late.

"Where is Raphael?" Splinter asks, just as Leo is working through the last stretch.

"I'll get him." Mike hops up from the floor, but before he's gone two steps Splinter stops him with a simple, "No."

Mike turns, confusion all over his face. Don freezes, and Leo comes slowly out of his position.

"It seems Raphael has chosen not to join us this morning," Splinter says, with that carefully-controlled lack of emotion that Leo has never quite learned to see through. "That is his decision." He moves forward. "Take your places."

Mike stays where he is. "We're just going to... train without him?"

Splinter pins Mike with his gaze. "Is that a problem, Michelangelo?"

Mike lowers his eyes. "No, Sensei."

"Then, if you would take your place," Splinter says, and Mike comes forward to kneel in his usual spot. Leo kneels as well, leaving an emptiness between them where Raph should be, and Don sits on his other side, and they wait for further instruction.

"When one is missing," Splinter begins, "it is wise to practice techniques that compensate for such an absence. We will review your three-man maneuvers. Leonardo, these are new to you..."

* * *

Leo comes out of training exhausted and sore. Splinter had placed him in Raphael's position for the maneuvers, and while it made sense to not shuffle Don and Mike around, Leo can't help feeling that it was also a subtle lesson meant for him: _You are not better than Raphael in ALL respects._

Leo prefers the description "compact" to "short" - he may be only five-foot-two, but his small frame has two hundred pounds of muscle and armor crammed onto it. He's no slouch in the weight-lifting department. Still, he doesn't have Raphael's raw strength, and two hours of being the boost-man and the pyramid-base have taken their toll. He's too tired to be angry at Raph about... about whatever he was supposed to be angry at Raph about.

He collapses into his chair, and vaguely hopes that someone will put some food in front of him.

After a while, he realizes there is already food in front of him: the basket of fruit was apparently left on the table overnight, and everything in it still looks perfectly good.

He lifts his eyes, and sees that Don and Mike are eating from it. Don is scooping out a melon-half with a spoon, using the thick rind as a built-in bowl, and Mike is eating something that is orange but might not actually be _an_ orange.

"Leo?"

He blinks.

"Bro, you still with us?"

A half-peeled banana appears in convenient grabbing distance, and he manages to raise his hand to take it.

"You guys," he says, after he's eaten half of it, "worked really hard while I was gone." He pulls the banana peel down further so he can take another bite. "Didn't you."

"Heck yeah," Mike says. "We had to do all _your_ work, dude. And when we slacked off, we had to yell at ourselves about it. It was no fun at all."

Leo smiles faintly. "It's okay, Mikey. I'll take back the un-fun jobs now."

Mike shifts awkwardly, and Leo isn't sure why he's reacting that way, but then Mike just gestures to the basket. "Eat what you want, dudes, there's no point saving it." He rubs his arm. "I'm gonna go jump in the shower."

Leo watches Mike slide out of his peripheral vision, and then he eats the end of the banana, and then he tilts his head from side to side, cracking his neck.

"You should have taught me that joint-aligning trick," Don says.

"It's fine." Leo reaches up with his non-banana hand, to rub his shoulder. "Do you mind if I steal the other shower?"

"No, go ahead," Don says. "You're clearly more in need."

Leo can't help smiling at that. "Very tactful, Donnie."

Don smiles back. "Would you prefer 'Yes, please, your overpowering body odor is causing me to lose my appetite'?"

Leo raises his brows at the hollow rind in Don's hand. "It doesn't seem to be affecting you that badly."

"Ninja fortitude," Don replies. He scrapes his spoon around the inside of the melon, seeing if there's anything edible left. "Seriously. Go. You stink."

Leo goes.

* * *

"Dude, I have no idea what you're saying."

Leo repeats his incomprehensible gibberish.

Mike rubs at his ear. "The very rich lady does _what_ to her tiny dog?"

Leo sighs and switches back to English. "No, Mikey, the order is reversed. _The tiny dog licks the very rich lady._"

"... I don't think so."

The Hamato dialect of Japanese, it turned out, was not Received by mysterious old dudes living high in the mountains of Hokkaido. The Ancient One had declared that he could not understand a word that came out of Leo's mouth, and he had made the flummoxed Turtle learn a more standard variant of the language. Leo had brought it home with him, and had been trying to teach it to his family. Just in case they ever wanted to speak to a Real Japanese Person.

Or whatever.

"Mikey, that's the grammar. You can disagree with it all you want, but if you get it wrong then _you'll_ be the one being eaten by a bag of chips."

"Bite me," Mike says, in the most polite form of their own dialect.

"If you're going to be rude," Leo returns, "at least use the real conjugation." He very helpfully supplies the correct verb form, and Mike rolls his eyes.

Don chooses that moment to wander in from wherever he's been hiding. "How does the lesson progress?" he asks, in awkwardly stilted Ancient-One-ese.

"The student is unwilling," Leo replies. He slides back into English. "Donnie, will you look in on Raph? I haven't even seen his light on."

"Sure," Don says, and heads upstairs.

"I could've done that," Mike says.

Leo raises a brow. "Why are you so eager to see Raph today? Or is it just that he provides a convenient excuse to skip out of lessons?"

"I'd come right back," Mike mutters.

Leo regards him calmly. "Why don't you tell me how quickly you would do it?"

"I'd be so fast, you'd –"

"_Nihongo ni shi te kudasai._"

Mike groans, and tries to think in Leo's messed-up backwards Japanese. "I will be more quickly as the lightning punching out of the clouds."

Leo listens, then patiently sets in to correcting his grammar, until they're interrupted by Don's reappearance.

"He's sleeping," Don reports.

Leo sighs. "_Still?_"

"I think he was out very late," Don says.

"Yeah," Mike puts in. "Like, I didn't go to bed until four, and he wasn't back yet."

Leo rubs his forehead. "All right. Thanks, Donnie."

Don quietly disappears, into whatever pocket dimension he spends his time being nerdy in.

"Gee, bro," Mike says, in his most innocently concerned tone of voice. "Looks like you're getting a headache there. You wanna go lie down?"

"Nice try, Mikey," Leo says. "Now. When you want to make a comparison…"

Mike puts on his best paying-attention face, and works on subconsciously absorbing the lesson while thinking about more interesting things.

* * *

Don has lied for Raph lots of times, so it doesn't really bother him that he's just done it again. He doesn't usually have to cover for such a prolonged absence, but the fact that Raph has now been who-knows-where for almost twenty-four hours doesn't really concern him that much either.

He knows, of course, that his family is in danger every time they poke their noses aboveground. He knows, too, that they aren't even completely safe in their own home. If he hadn't known it before the Mousers, he's now learned the lesson twice, and it isn't one he'll soon forget.

But he also knows that _no one_ is ever really safe. Muggings, vehicle accidents, homicide - bad things can happen to anyone, and Don has learned that at some point you just have to stop worrying and live your life.

So, as he walks back to his work corner and flicks on the computer, he doesn't worry. He knows that Raph is a big boy, and he trusts him to come home safely, when he's good and ready.

* * *

"Dudes, Sensei, dinner's ready!"

If Splinter had owned a watch, he could almost have set it by Michelangelo's nightly dinner call. His youngest son may have been the most relaxed in regards to most things, but he was punctilious about food.

Splinter rises, and goes to the kitchen.

Michelangelo serves him a steaming plate, then sets out three more portions, for himself and his two arriving brothers.

"Is Raph still sleeping?" Leonardo asks, after a few minutes go by and the fourth brother still has not appeared.

Michelangelo, his mouth full of food, makes a noncommittal noise.

Leonardo's eyes slide to his father, as his fork lowers. "Are you sure we shouldn't wake him?"

Michelangelo swallows and shrugs. "I put some away for him. He knows where the fridge is."

As Leonardo's gaze returns to his plate, Splinter's eyes go to Donatello. His third son has not said anything, and in his answering gaze, Splinter sees that he knows.

He allows a small flicker to cross his expression. Donatello replies with a minute nod, and then they both turn their attention to their food, and the conversation drifts back to other subjects.

* * *

Of course Splinter knew. He must have known all day.

Don scrubs the dishes.

Splinter always knew when his sons were not at home. As impossible as it was to sneak past the ninja master, it was equally impossible to fool him into _thinking_ you snuck past when you didn't.

He probably even knew that Raph's sai and shell-cell were in his room. He would have noticed that Raphael did not have them on him when he ran out.

Don rinses a pan, and wonders why Splinter hadn't said anything.

He's learned not to worry when his brothers are out, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't breathe a quiet sigh of relief every time they come back in. It bothers him that he hadn't even _known_ Raph was not at home. What would have been the harm, for Splinter to mention it?

He realizes that his hands have stilled in the sink. He rinses the pan again, not quite sure whether he's already done it, and puts it in the drying rack.

Maybe it's just that Raph doesn't want his brothers to notice how long he's been out, and Splinter has intuited that need and quietly kept Raphael's secret.

As Don is keeping it now.

It's a long-standing agreement that he has with Raph. The two of them are usually up latest, and Don doesn't tell anyone what hour Raph tends to come home, as long as Raph doesn't tell anyone how much overtime Don puts in on his pet projects.

So Don won't say anything this time either.

Except, maybe, to Raphael himself.

* * *

Later, they play Parcheesi. Mike, in a fit of boredom several weeks earlier, had made a very passable set out of a pizza box and some bottle caps. All they were lacking was a set of dice, and Don had supplied the need by means of a little number-generating program on his computer.

Leo sets up an impressive series of blockades, Mike captures everyone in sight, and Don advances steadily around the board, but in the end it's Master Splinter who gets all his pieces home first.

"Play again?" Mike asks, as he sweeps his bottle caps back to the starting circle.

"Not me." Leo stretches his arms over his head, then stands up. "I'm going to bed."

"Aw, come on." Mike arranges Leo's pieces for him, making them look inviting. "It'll be lopsided."

"No, I'm out too." Don scoots back from the board, and gets to his feet.

Mike raises his brows hopefully at Master Splinter.

In reply, Splinter places one claw on each of his four pieces, and moves them back to start. "Prepare to lose again, my son," is all he says.

* * *

Leo goes to bed, but Don doesn't. He sits in his room, reading a book, until everyone else has retired. And then he goes back downstairs.

* * *

Raphael enters the Lair silently, and picks his way stealthily across the room towards the staircase.

At least, he starts to. He only gets three steps before he's caught in the beam of a flashlight.

He glares towards the light, and it blinds him, obscuring the person behind it. He knows who it is, though. "Leo."

The flashlight flicks up, and he does a double-take at the face revealed by its beam. "_Donnie?_"

The light swings down again, illuminating a patch of floor. "Sit."

"Like hell. I'm goin' to bed."

"Raphael," Don says, "my finger is on the alarm controls. Sit, or I'll press the button and everyone will know you just got home."

"Maybe I just got down here really fast," Raph returns.

"Do you usually sleep with your mask on, Raphael?"

_Shit._

He sits in the circle picked out by the flashlight, and squints into the brightness. A second later the light clicks off, and Raph hears Don set it down on the concrete floor.

"So," Don says. "Do you want to tell me where you've been?"

"Do you want to tell me why Leo isn't here?" Raph replies.

"He doesn't know you were still out. He thinks you were sleeping all day. You might thank me for that."

Raph snorts, ignoring that in favor of answering the earlier question. "I camped out at Adelphi."

"Adelphi," Don repeats. "How ironic."

"Huh?"

"Never mind." Don's voice is coming from above him. He's dragged a chair out, to give himself some kind of psychological advantage. Raph isn't falling for it. "Tell me what's bothering you."

Raph grunts. "What, you're going to hold me hostage so you can play shrink-doctor?"

"I've got all night, Raphael. And if we're still sitting here when everyone wakes up, then you won't have gained anything by being stubborn."

"You _know_ what's bothering me."

"Yes," Don acknowledges, "but it would be nice to hear it from you, instead of getting half the story from Mike and figuring out the rest from what you said to Leo last night."

"I don't wanna talk about it."

"Too bad."

Raph scowls into the dark. "What do you want, Donnie?"

A thin sigh. "This isn't about what _I_ want, Raph."

"Right," Raph grumbles. "Cuz you're the wizard who has everything he needs, and gets his jollies granting other people's wishes."

"Raph –" A scrape of chair legs against concrete, and then Don is sitting on the floor beside him, and he feels the press of a forehead against his shoulder. "What I _want_ is for you to stop fighting us. But I know that won't happen until you get what you need. So just tell me what it is."

He tightens his jaw, then lets just a few words slip out. "Need Leo to stop being an ass."

"That's not it."

"What, now you're a mind-reader too? Whaddya mean _that's not it_?"

Don shifts, moving his head away. "Because this isn't really about Leo either."

Something boils up in him, and he can't stop it from spilling out of his mouth. "Well, fuck, Donnie! I guess all the problems are just with me, aren't they? Sure woulda been better if I just hadn't come back at all!"

"Raph –"

"Yeah, that's right. Cuz I'm just the fuck-up who gets in the way of everyone else having a nice life. Okay, good, problem solved." He pushes to his feet. "I'm outta here."

"Raph –" A brush against his forearm, then a grip around his wrist. He shakes it off, stalks towards the door. He hears Don following him. "_Raph._"

He whirls, glares, even though the effect is lost in the darkness. "Yeah, _what?_"

Even in the pitch blackness, he can feel Don's own glare coming back at him. "Don't _yeah what_ me."

He snorts and turns away again.

"Raph…"

He thinks that, over the course of his life, he's heard his name said in every possible tone of voice. But something in this soft call makes him stand still and listen to what comes next.

"Please. Just once, do you think you can have an argument without changing the subject, or slinging insults, or grunting until the other person gives up?"

"Oh," he mutters. "Now we're havin' an argument?"

"I was hoping for a conversation," Don says. "But if you'd rather scream and carry on, we can do that too. I'm not leaving. And I'm not letting you leave either."

He tenses. He hates being caged, even by his own family. "You can't stop me."

"I'm still holding the alarm remote."

His fists clench. "You're a real piece o' work, you know that, Donnie? How'm I supposed to argue with a genius like you?"

"You have a wonderful mind, Raph," Don replies. "And I'm sorry to be the reason you don't use it more often."

"You're a _jackass_," Raph says, but Don ignores him and continues.

"I'm not stupid, Raph. You're always complaining to me about how you feel second-best to Leo. It's not hard to extrapolate that you feel second-best to _all_ of us. And I know that if you can't be first, you put yourself out of the comparison entirely, so no one can say you're less-than."

His fingers curl harder into his palms. "Shit, Donnie. Do I even need to be here? Sounds like you got all the answers already."

"I don't have this one." A soft swish of feet over floor, and a hand on his shoulder. "Please? Help me learn?"

He shrugs the hand off. "Not your science project."

"I didn't say you were."

"Sure actin' like it."

"That's not true, Raph."

He folds his arms tightly across his chest, more a hug than a show of bravado. "Prove it."

A long silence.

He lowers his head, rubbing his thumb over his arm. "Thought so."

"I don't know how to prove something like that."

"Imagine that," Raph says. "The brainiac can't prove something."

"I never said I had all the answers."

"Yeah, and I never said I wanted you to solve all my problems."

"Good," Don says. "Because I didn't offer to solve them."

That brings him up short. "Huh?"

"I didn't offer to solve your problems," Don repeats, in that irritating, over-precise way he uses to explain things that his listener didn't understand the first time. "You're more than capable of solving them yourself."

"You… what?"

"You can solve your own problems," Don says again. "But you never do, and you never let anyone do it for you. You just resign yourself to being miserable." He's silent a moment. "I've never understood why." Another pause. "Please don't make a wisecrack."

Raph just stands there, dumbstruck. How can Don not understand this? It's simple. He takes so much from his brothers already, and gives so little, that he can't ask them for any more. Can't ask them to go out of their way to make _him_ a little happier, because he has more happiness than he deserves, and he won't buy more if he has to sacrifice his brothers' happiness to pay for it.

He can't ask Leo to become less, so he himself can feel like more.

"I –" He swallows hard. "Why can't you just leave me alone?"

"Because you're part of this family, too, Raph," Don says. "And when something is bothering you, it brings all of us down."

"Fine." He shifts again towards the door. "I'll just take my misery elsewhere. Wouldn't want to harsh your good mood."

"Raph." Again, that hand on his shoulder. "Why can't you understand? Happiness isn't finite. There's no law of conservation for it. It feeds itself. You're not… you're not being _generous_, by making yourself the keeper of misery. You make all of us hurt, because we have to see you suffer."

Raph stiffens. There really _are_ no secrets in this family.

The hand is still there. It stays there, waiting, as he wars with himself.

And then the answer comes out, in the softest whisper.

"I just… I just want him to be part of us again."

A little squeeze on his shoulder, and it pushes another sentence out of him.

"Because he's holding back, and we… we need him."

"We need you too, Raph," Don says. "Don't hide from us."

He releases a breath, and his muscles uncoil. The hand sits easier on his shoulder.

"There," Don says. "Was that so hard?"

He grunts. "You're still a jackass."

"I know."

"And another thing."

"Hm?"

"There's no remote for the alarms."

The hand slides from his shoulder.

He smirks into the darkness. "Good night, Donnie."


	9. The Crossroads

Chapter Eight – The Crossroads

Leo is first into the dojo Thursday morning also. As he stands in the room that is rapidly becoming familiar, doing exercises he has known his whole life, he wonders what this new day will bring.

Raph comes in, calm and silent, with no indication as to why he hadn't been there the day before. No indication that he _hadn't_ been there.

For a while, Leo says nothing. There's nothing he _can_ say, in this place of truce. Nothing that won't be taken the wrong way. Nothing that won't drag both of them back into the fight of two nights ago.

Nothing except "Good morning."

He says the words, and then he replays them quickly, several times, inside his head. Yes. He had managed to keep all sarcasm and accusation out of them.

Still, there's a guardedness in Raph's voice when he replies, "Morning."

And they say nothing more.

The silence hurts, but it's better than the alternative.

* * *

Michelangelo listens carefully to the instructions for the day's training and then, like an idiot, he opens his mouth and gives his opinion.

"You're kidding, right?"

Splinter regards him calmly from atop his upturned tire. "Michelangelo, please step up."

Mike groans inwardly, but he knows he was asking for it. He gamely mounts the other tire, and faces his father.

Three seconds later he is facing the ceiling, a dull sensation in his plastron where Splinter hit him. He turns his head to watch as his tire rolls away and wobbles to a halt in the far corner. The straw mats crunch under his cheek.

"As you can see," Splinter says, "this will be a difficult exercise. Donatello, if you would kindly bring back that tire."

Mike doesn't bother to get up. Feet pad past his head.

"Thank you," Splinter says, when Don returns. "If you would stand there, then, and Raphael –" He steps down from his tire, yielding his place. "Leonardo, if you would spar against your horizontal brother."

"Geez, okay," Mike says. He gets to his feet, goes over to the other set of tires, and stands up opposite Leo.

Leo is standing stock-still and plumb-line vertical, as though he balances on round objects every moment of his life. Mike shifts his weight back and forth, the tire rolling right and left as his center of gravity moves over one leg and then the other.

He smiles.

Leo doesn't.

This was going to hurt.

* * *

It hurts a lot.

Mike has natural agility on his side, but Leo handily demonstrates the virtues of good form and a rock-solid steadiness earned from years of disciplined practice. Both of them wind up on the floor a lot, frequently with runaway tires bouncing off parts of their anatomy.

When Splinter calls a halt, Mike is vertical, but he's so tired that he just collapses to the ground, letting his tire roll where it will.

Lying on the mats, listening to his brothers pant and groan around him, Mike thinks they've come a long way towards making this place feel like home. But as he tries to get his breath back through the acrid stench of lemon and old rubber, he thinks of one more thing they really need to do.

* * *

Raph won almost all of his rounds, and feels pretty good about it. That presumptuous little brat deserved to have his face rubbed in some tatami.

When he gets to the kitchen, he glances at the basket. At first he thinks it's empty, but on second look he sees there's one thing left.

It's the peach.

"Geez, guys," he says, even as he snatches it. "What happened to equal distribution?"

"You didn't show up," Don says.

But Raph knows it was no accident which piece got left over.

Presumptuous little _brats_.

"Okay, so," Mike says, around a mouthful of some breakfast bar crap. "Announcement."

Raph rolls his eyes, but makes a "go ahead" gesture.

Mike has at least enough manners to swallow before continuing. "I'm getting some incense. Cuz this place smells bad. And now you won't be surprised and freak out if you start smelling jasmine or sandalwood or whatever."

"Sounds good to me," Don says.

"_Yes_," Leo agrees, with great feeling.

"Yeah, fine," Raph says. "And I smell bad too, so nobody better be surprised when they march their lazy butts to the bathroom and find me already usin' the shower." He throws the peach pit in the garbage, turns on his heel, and stalks out of the kitchen.

_Geez,_ he thinks, as he heads for the bathroom._ INCENSE. As if our biggest problem is what the damn Lair SMELLS like._

* * *

"You meant _buy_ incense, right?" Leo asks, after Don has also left the kitchen.

"Um, yeah," Mike says. "That's how things work now, right? We're all honest Turtles."

Leo doesn't answer immediately. Mike watches him think. He makes a strange sight, standing there with flecks of rubber and tire tracks all over him, as though he's just come back from a fight against a monster truck. Mike would giggle at the thought, if Leo didn't have such a serious expression on his face.

"Let's…" Leo pauses, seeming to need another moment to complete mental calculations before he shares his decision. "Let's use the family money, okay? Not yours."

Mike tilts his head. "You sure?"

Leo only smiles, and turns to go.

Then he turns back. "Cinnamon, right?"

Mike melts, at just the thought of his favorite scent. "I love you, bro."

Leo echoes the words, but Mike doesn't need to hear them. He already did, in those other  
eight letters.

_Cinnamon._

_Mmm.  
_

* * *

After his shower, Raph paces his room, trying to figure out what he's going to say to Leo. He lines the words up in his head, rehearses them, throws them out, starts again.

He's never been good at this. He's never been able to find enough words, in English or in Japanese or in any other language, to capture and name and know the myriad things that bubble up inside him. He can't say how he feels and he can't say why he feels that way and it's just so damn _frustrating_.

Words, and words, and more words, and all of them fly wide of the mark. Feelings are the only target he can't hit.

"Fuck it," he growls, to the walls. It's _Leo_. Leo has a way of seeing through his verbal fumbling, and figuring out what he's really trying to say. The words will be good enough.

He throws the door open, stomps to the next room, and barges in without bothering to knock.

Only to find that Leo is on the phone.

Leo looks up at him in surprise. "What?" he mouths.

"Get off the damn phone," Raph says, trying desperately not to let the last of the words escape. "I wanna talk to you."

Leo doesn't drop his gaze, even as he speaks into the shell-cell. "April, I have to go. I'll see you tomorrow, okay? … Yes. 'Bye." He sits up, reaching to place the phone on his shelf. As soon as it's put down, he says, "I'm all yours."

Something boils up inside him. The useless words flee before it, and all he knows is, "That's a damn lie."

Leo blinks at him, opens his mouth, but for once it seems like he doesn't have any words either.

"Listen, Raph…" he says, after a moment. "I'm sorry about -"

And this is the other reason he doesn't bother to talk when he's angry about something. Because his brothers never freaking _listen_. But Leo sure is reading the expression on his face right now.

Leo sighs. "Right. Not allowed to say that."

Raph relaxes fractionally. "Damn straight."

"I just don't understand." Leo props his heel on the edge of the bedframe, where it sticks out under the mattress. He rests his arms on his bent knee, and hangs his head low over them. "I thought things were okay between us. I thought we were doing better."

"We _were_ doing better," Raph says. "_You_ were doing better. You were comin' outta your funk. But then this thing with the ghosts blew over, and you went right back in again."

Leo raises his head. "I'm not _in_ a funk! I -"

"No?" Raph cuts in. "Then _I_ must be the one who doesn't understand. Enlighten me, Leo, cuz I don't get it."

A long pause.

"I can't," Leo says softly.

Raph turns away.

"I _can't_, Raph!" Leo says, to his back. "I had to go halfway around the world, and stay there for six months, to learn this! I can't teach it to you in an afternoon!"

Raph whirls. "You could _start!_ Shit, Leo. You've been home almost three months, and I ain't learned a damn thing."

Leo presses his forehead into his kneepad. "Raph… I know it's hard. Just please, _please_, trust me. I know that's asking a lot, because I haven't been the most trustworthy person lately. But I need you to do this."

_I need you to do this._ Two possible meanings for that sentence, and Raph's mind flip-flops between them, trying to decide which Leo intended and which was just an accident.

"Whaddya mean?" he asks, when neither sense captures enough ground in the mental battle to make it a decisive winner. "You need for me to trust you, or you need _me_, in order to do... whatever you're doing?"

For a long time, Leo stays how he is, staring into the stitching of his kneepad. When he finally raises his head, there's a small smile on his face.

"... Both."

Raph fights down the hope that rises in his chest. If Leo really needed him, really cared about him, he wouldn't have stayed away so long. He wouldn't have written only one letter.

One _goddamn_ letter.

But he needs to hear this, so he crosses his arms and stays where he is. "I'm listenin'."

Leo doesn't answer immediately. Instead, he reaches out, picks up the carved dragon sitting on his shelf, and sets it on his lap. "I don't know where to start…" He smoothes his fingers over the dragon's unfinished head. "Raph… do you know it took me six weeks to make yours?"

"What?" Raph blinks at the change in topic, and at the unexpected information. "But it's only –" He cups his hand to show the size of the figurine. "The hell were you doing for _six weeks?_"

Leo's hand stills. "I made nineteen of them."

"_What?_"

Leo looks up. "It's the nineteenth dragon, Raph. The first eighteen… weren't good enough."

Raph throws up his hands. "You gotta be kiddin' me. Even at arts-and-crafts you're a perfectionist."

Leo shakes his head. "They weren't good enough, Raph. Not for you."

Raph crosses his arms again, letting them rest against his plastron. "It's a frickin' _toy_, Leo."

Leo ignores him, lost in his own reverie. "I left the first eighteen in Japan. But the nineteenth… I had it in my bag all the way home. Every night I would take it out, look at it, and wonder if I would give it to you."

"Right," Raph mutters. "Cuz the nineteenth wasn't good enough either."

Leo's head jerks up. "Because I didn't know if you would _be there_, Raph! I didn't know if you would be _alive!_ I thought –" His hand comes up to wipe at his eyes. "I thought I would be putting it on an altar…"

Raph freezes.

"I didn't know –" Leo's voice shakes. "- what I would find."

"Shit, bro," Raph breathes. He almost doesn't notice his feet carrying him across the room, his knees bending to seat him on the bed, his arm snaking around Leo's shoulders. "'s okay."

Leo turns his head, burying his face against Raph's neck. "I never would have forgiven myself," he whispers. "For not being here. For not being good enough."

Raph just sits, and waits. He can't speak. His head is full of the image of a death altar dedicated to himself, and there's no room for words.

"Sometimes things don't work out right on the first try," Leo says quietly. "Sometimes they don't work on the second or third try either. But you have to keep trying." He pulls back, so he can look his brother in the eye. "Can we start again, Raph? Can we put this behind us?"

"Yeah," is all Raph can say. "Yeah."

Leo puts his head back on Raph's shoulder, and they sit like that.

"Okay," Raph says, when the moment has gone on long enough and the thought of his own demise is starting to make him queasy. "Enough o' that. Pull yerself t'gether." Leo sits up, as Raph pulls his arm back. "You wanna start over –" It's not exactly a question, but Leo nods. "- then here's how it's gonna go. You're gonna stop bein' a damn idiot. When you _are_ a damn idiot, cuz you always do manage to be one, I'm gonna _tell_ you you're a damn idiot."

"I don't want to -"

Raph ignores him. "Seriously, Leo. It's not an imposition. When have I ever _not_ told you when you were bein' a damn idiot?"

Leo's mouth quirks up, though he keeps his eyes averted.

"So, as I was sayin'," Raph goes on, "when I tell you you're bein' a damn idiot, you're gonna stop what you're doin' and do somethin' else."

"I –"

"_And we will do that_," Raph says loudly, "until you get it right."

Leo's hands steady the dragon in his lap. "Okay," he says. "Just one thing."

"What?" Raph asks guardedly.

Leo turns his head slowly, to look at him. The little smile is still on his face. "You're not allowed to use the phrase _damn idiot_."

Raph can't help the laugh that explodes from him. "Yeah, okay."

Leo's smile widens a little, in Raph's direction, before he turns to put the dragon back on the shelf.

"So, uh," Raph says. "You seein' April tomorrow? Finished somethin' else?"

Leo freezes, his arms still outstretched.

And just like that, Raph closes down. "What?"

Leo draws his hands in slowly, rubs them together in his lap. "It's… for a special reason."

"Shit." Raph pushes to his feet and paces across the room.

"Raph –" Leo hesitates. "I may not be doing a very good job of telling you things, but I've never lied to you." He takes a deep breath. "I'm going to April's because a journalist from the _Post_ is interviewing me."

Tension creeps through every muscle. Arms, shoulders, neck, his fingers curling into his palms. "Whatever phrase you want me to use in place of _damn idiot_," he says to the wall, "imagine me sayin' it now."

"Raph, no," Leo says. He sounds hurt. _Good_. "I'm not. It's a phone interview. She won't see anything, she won't know anything… I asked Master Splinter and he said it was okay." With every sentence he sounds more desperate. "It will be good for business. The money… We'll get a couch, a TV, motorcycle parts, whatever you want…"

"I don't. Want. The damn. _Money_," Raph grits.

He slams the door behind him when he leaves.

* * *

Don hears a door slam upstairs.

He's already learned the different sounds made by each of the doors in the Lair, so he knows the noise is coming from Leo's room. This is strange, since Leo is not usually given to slamming doors.

He hums thoughtfully, and returns to his work.

* * *

Sometime later, Don surfaces from his program and realizes Leo is sitting on the edge of his desk.

"How did you do it?" Leo asks, without preamble.

"Seventy thousand lines of code." He saves his work compulsively before leaning back in his chair. "But I think all the systems are finally talking to each other."

"You know what I mean."

Don pushes the keyboard back, and rubs his aching eyes. "I just… gave him space." He peels one eye open, even as he presses a palm into the other. "He does better with freedom, you know."

"Does he?" Leo asks, in a strangely blank tone of voice.

With his free hand, Don pushes some leftover electronica around the desk. "He really does. He makes better decisions when nobody is following him around, second-guessing him."

Leo looks out across the Lair, and doesn't reply.

"So how did it go?" Don asks.

Leo sighs. He reaches absently for a circuit board by his hip, but catches himself and returns his hand to his lap. "Mixed bag," he says. "I thought we were making progress, but then I – set him off again."

Don removes his hand from his face, opens a drawer, sweeps the circuit board into it.

"All right," Leo says. The same _all right_ he uses when he has outlined a plan of battle, and is steeling himself to execute it. "I agreed to do an interview for a newspaper, about my art." His shoulders drop, without the tension of nerves to hold them up. "There. Now everyone knows."

"Okay," Don says. "I can think of several reasons why that would make a certain brother of ours angry."

Leo's gaze remains directed to the floor. "So can I," he says. "I just wish I knew which of them it was. He wouldn't talk to me anymore, after I told him."

Don's hand finds its way back to his face, and he rests his cheek in it. "Give him time, Leo. He processes these things slowly. _He_ probably doesn't know which reason it is, yet."

Leo raises his eyes to glance at the computer. "Donnie… how could he have been leader? He reasons so badly under pressure."

Don follows Leo's gaze, knows his brother is seeing the _Rules of the Hamato Family_ superimposed over the dense lines of code that fill the screen. "He also rises to challenges." He takes a deep breath, and says what he didn't dare to say back in August. "He _was_ a good leader, while you were gone."

"I know," Leo says. He gestures to the computer, as if what Don and Mike had written for him is really displayed there. "He had a lot of smart strategies. This idea of pretending to be me - very clever." He drops his hand. "I just don't understand _how_. Where did it come from, Donnie? Has that always been in him?"

"You know," Don says, "if it has been, you're not the only one who missed it. I really didn't think anyone would be fooled by that ruse. But he insisted on it, and… it worked surprisingly well. When he pretended to be you, when he put on your spare gear - it changed him. It was like he _was_ you." He regards Leo thoughtfully. "I'm beginning to think there's something magical about a blue mask and a pair of katana."

Wordlessly, Leo reaches up and unknots his mask. He slips Don's bandana off over the top of his head, and ties his own across his brother's eyes.

"There is no magic," he says softly. He leaves Don's mask draped over one of the computer speakers, and walks away.


	10. The Parting of the Ways

Chapter Nine – The Parting of the Ways

_When Leo had given him the dragon, that first night in the new Lair, he had thanked him with sarcasm._

_"Geez, Leo. You go all the way to Japan, and all you get me is a lousy dragon?"_

_But he had loved it, really. He had fallen asleep, that first night, with it clenched in his palm, the grating of the catwalk pressing hatchmarks into his skin._

_The next day he had gone into each of the upstairs rooms, inspected them critically, and chosen his favorite. He left his dragon in the middle of the floor, as a marker._

_RAPH'S ROOM. KEEP OUT._

_As he acquired or built furniture for his new room, the dragon migrated to more and more privileged positions, until it took up final residence on a shelf near the hammock. Every morning, if Raph did not wake up in the right position to see the dragon when he opened his eyes, he rolled over to look at it before getting up._

_Some weeks later, noticing how much Mikey missed his action figures, Raph let him borrow the dragon so it and the wooden cat could engage in an epic superhero battle. Raph warned Mike that if the dragon did not come back in that "near-mint condition" he talked so much about, the difference would come out of his shell._

_Mike returned the figurine without a scratch._

_Raph let him borrow it again._

_But he never felt quite satisfied unless it was in his own possession, guarding the rest of his meager belongings._

_When he found out that Leo was making other carvings, and __**selling **__them, it made him furious. How __**dare**__ Leo give these special gifts to strangers? How __**dare**__ he make a dragon even more beautiful and detailed than Raph's own, as if the palm-sized serpent were only practice, a rough prototype to be given away for nothing?_

_Raph had seen the receipts. He had done the math. He __**knew**__ how much the larger dragon was going to sell for._

_And he had heard what Leo was planning to do with the money._

_"A couch, a TV, motorcycle parts, whatever you want…"_

_But he doesn't want any of it. He can't be bribed, with gifts or money or promises. He can't be __**bought**__._

_He doesn't want this damn artist/salesman that Leo has become. He just wants __**Leo**__, the brother who fought by his side in battles, scavenged with him in junkyards, starved with him when no food could be found._

_It's not that he's opposed to his family being more comfortable, to having a wider margin between themselves and death from hunger or cold or sickness._

_He just doesn't want to do it like this._

_He'll gladly sell himself, to make his brothers happier. But he won't sell a brother to secure material gain for the rest of the family._

_Leo is priceless, and Raph won't give him up for any amount of motorcycle parts._

* * *

Leo traces Raph's path to the dojo. He knows his brother went this way. He would know it even if the sounds of Raph punching the sandbag couldn't be heard all across the Lair.

This is one thing about Raph that _didn't_ change while Leo was gone.

He goes in quietly. Leans against the wall by the door. Knows that Raph knows he's there, even if he doesn't choose to acknowledge him.

_Give him space_, Don had said.

He can't do it. He needs closeness just as much as Raph needs distance. His mind knows that he should back off, but his heart can't bear to let his brother drift away from him like this.

_This is counterproductive_, his mind tells him. _You'll only chase him off._

_This is your family_, his heart replies. _You can't leave them alone when they're hurting._

Even when being alone is so clearly what they want.

_Yes, all right_, he says, to head and heart. _I'm doing this for myself. And that's okay too._

He stands a while longer, watching Raph ignore him, working out the least aggressive way to force this new confrontation.

"Raph..." he begins cautiously.

"Got nothin' to say to you," Raph grunts.

_So much for that._

Leo sighs and sits on a stack of tires. The hole in the middle makes a surprisingly comfortable nest for his shell, and the incongruous image of the wooden panda fitting into the egg cup flits through his mind. "The whole point of banning the phrase _damn idiot_," he says, "is to get you to elaborate on _why_ I'm being an idiot."

Raph doesn't reply. Or maybe he does, in some kind of violent Morse code, the sharp tattoo of fists against sandbag.

"What bothers you about this, Raph?"

Still no answer. Just _thump, thump_, against the heavy bag.

"I promise, it's safe. I'm not putting any of us in danger. Why -"

The loud _wham_ of a double-punch cuts him off. "Why do you keep gettin' _rewarded_ for this?"

Now it's Leo's turn to be silent.

"Story of two Turtles, Leo," Raph says, without interrupting his routine. "One o' them's a perpetual grouch, likes to jump into battle like he got a death wish, and does loads of other stupid impulsive things. 'Control your temper', they tell that Turtle. 'Find your focus. Let go of the anger.'" He kicks the bag savagely. "The other Turtle, he gets real mad this one time. Starts actin' a lot like the first Turtle. But instead of lectures, and lessons that don't help, he gets sent to another master, who _can_ help him, and a couple months later he comes home magically cured!" A shoulder-barge followed by a palm strike. "Sound _familiar_, Leo?" He doesn't wait for Leo to answer. "And not only that, but you come home with this new skill that you can make money off of, and you go and get _famous_ for it, and you are just _so_ generous, to buy the rest of us poor fucks goodies with _your_ money."

"Raph -"

"And once again," Raph goes on, "you're the special one that can do everything but wrong, and I'm -" he hits the bag as hard as he can "- still -" another ferocious punch "- _USELESS!_" A spinning kick that nearly throws the bag off its chain.

"You're not useless," Leo says softly.

Raph steps out of the sandbag's arc, making no move to stop its crazy swinging. "Name one thing I'm good for."

"You were a good leader while I was gone," Leo says. "Don told me so. He said that when you pretended to be me -"

"Great." Raph dusts his hands off and moves to the door. "I'm only worth somethin' when I'm pretendin' to be you." He looks at his hands before lowering them to his sides, and Leo is pretty sure his knuckles are bleeding. "I'm outta here."

"Raph –"

"To my _room_. And don't fucking follow me again."

Then he's gone, slipping from Leo's grasp, and once again his selfish stupidity has stolen everything from him.

* * *

"Donniiieeeee."

For a moment, Don doesn't react. He remains turned towards the door of the dojo, his eyes tracing Raph's departure.

A swat on his shoulder. "Donnie."

His mouth twitches, and then he turns to face his visitor.

"Donnie, I'm –" Mike trails off. "Why are you wearing Leo's mask?"

Don sighs, pulls the bandana off, hangs it over his computer speaker beside his own mask. "Never mind. What's up?"

Mike puts on his best pouting face. "I'm bored."

"Ah." Don swivels his chair back to the desk, and opens some windows on his screen. "I have a task for you."

"_Ah, I have a task for you_," Mike mimics. He drops the impersonation and slides into deadpan. "Wow, Don. That sounds _fun_."

"You will like this," Don promises.

Mike leans closer, in spite of himself.

Don brings up a map of the sewers under Central Park. It's marked with dozens of dots, dots that certainly do not exist on any _official_ map of the tunnels.

"These are the locations of my sensors," Don says. "Pick one. Don't tell me which. Go there and make yourself obnoxious. We'll see if the system notices."

"Gotcha," Mike says.

"The system doesn't have sound in either direction," Don continues, "so keep your phone on." He rummages in a drawer, comes up with his own shell-cell, and sets it on the desk.

"Can I –" Mike starts.

"Yes, Mikey," Don says, with great benevolence. "You may pretend you are a spy."

"_Sweet_." Mike extracts the headset from his shell-cell, and fixes it over his ears. "Double-oh-Mikey, at your service." He makes a sweeping bow, then ninja-spies out of the Lair, humming the _Mission: Impossible_ theme.

Don shakes his head, and opens a browser window. He can check some e-mail while he waits for Mike to try to infiltrate his security.

* * *

The lights above his computer start flashing, and he flips back to the security program.

"What is the matter?"

He almost startles at his master's sudden approach, but keeps it under control. "Only a test, Sensei. Watch."

He bends his fingers to the keyboard, and calls up a stream of data. He points to a critical phrase in the output, even though he knows it means nothing to his father. "There's our interloper." A string of commands rapidly entered, and a video window fills the screen.

The video shows Michelangelo's back, as he searches the wrong wall for the camera.

"Freeze, Agent M," Don says into the shell-cell lying open on his desk. "We have you in our sights."

"Oh yeah?" Mike's voice comes back through the phone. "Where am I, Doctor Dastard?"

"You are at the south end of the Mall," Don replies. He enters a few more commands. "You got there via the Ramble and Cherry Hill."

"Hey, come on." The Mike on the screen wags his finger, still in the wrong direction. "It's cheating if you watch."

"I didn't watch," Don says. "The new system keeps a log of minor disturbances, as well as setting off the alarms for anything major. Enough blips in sequence, and it will let us know something is moving around."

"Neat," Mike says, and Splinter also nods in approval. "So, how come I don't hear any alarms?"

"Disabled them for the test."

"Aw, come on, Donnie. That was gonna be the most fun part."

"For _you_." Don shares a look with Splinter.

Mike makes a small noise of hopes raised and broken. "Well, I'm here. What do you want me to do?"

"First," Don says, "see if you can find the camera."

Mike starts moving his hands over the wall.

Don rests his forehead in his palm. "Hint, it's behind you."

Mike turns and beams. "See me now?"

"Yes, Mikey."

"_Secret Agent_ Mikey, to you."

"Okay, Secret Agent. Find the camera."

Mike commences to thoroughly search the wall. He looks back and forth, up and down. He peers between the pipes and into the mortar of the bricks. "Can't find it, bro," he says finally.

"Good," Don says. "Then no one else will either."

Mike steps back from the wall. "Anything else?"

"Yes," Don says. "I'd like to test one more thing. Would you move a little to the left for me?"

Mike sidesteps, his image moving right across the monitor.

Don glances to Master Splinter. "Watch this."

He hits a button on the keyboard. On the screen, a cloud of dust sprays out of a hidden nook in the sewer wall, coating Michelangelo with fine particles.

Mike screams.

"Donatello!" Splinter says sharply.

The screaming coming through the phone resolves into words. "Aaah, get it off, get it off, get it off –"

"Don't worry, Sensei," Don says. "It's only a test payload." He leans over the shell-cell again. "Mikey – Mikey, stop screaming. It won't hurt you."

On the monitor, Mike continues to flail around. His hands bat at his snout, trying to brush off the dust. Then he pauses, holds his fingers above his nose, and sniffs. "Is this _sawdust?_"

"Leo's been making a lot of it lately," Don says. He moves the mouse, clicking controls in his program. "No reason to let it go to waste."

"Dude," Mike says. "That is _not_ funny."

"It's not supposed to be," Don replies.

No answer from the other end of the line. On the screen, Mike wipes the wood particles from his arms. His movements are sharp, angry.

"Mikey?" Don says. "Are you mad at me?"

Mike glances up. He isn't smiling. Then he goes back to trying to remove the stubborn dust from his person.

"I'm sorry," Don says. He looks again to Master Splinter, apologizing to him as well. "Come back. I'll make it up to you."

Mike glances down the tunnel. Then he turns in the opposite direction, walks out of the camera's range, and disappears.

From the shell-cell, a dull click as Mike hangs up.

* * *

For a while, Leo just sits there in the dojo, watching the bag swing. Then he sits there watching the residual swirl of dust motes disturbed by the bag's motion. And then he sits as nothing around him moves.

Eventually, he gets up and goes back to the main room, his heart heavy and his feet slow.

He finds himself sitting again on the corner of Don's desk.

"I'm not talking to him anymore," he says.

Don doesn't look up from whatever he's doing on the computer. "Hm?"

"I'm just..." He sighs. "It's pointless. It only ends in more arguing."

Don doesn't answer.

"Donnie?"

Don makes a frustrated noise - whether at him or at what's on the screen, Leo can't tell. "Look, you want to be useful? Leave Raph alone. Help Mike."

Leo blinks. "What's wrong with Mike?"

Don looks at him, finally, sadly. "You haven't noticed?"

Guilt grips Leo's guts. "No...?"

Don turns back to his work. "He's been so jumpy lately..."

Leo frowns. "No he hasn't."

"Yes, he has," Don says. "He seems okay, but it's always right under the surface. He's on the edge of panic all the time. He never really feels safe..." He looks up again. "Do you know, he's hardly been in the water since -?"

"What?" Leo searches back through his memories. Surely Mike had gone swimming in the past weeks. They all did it, a spontaneous jump-in as they walked by the pool, just for the fun of getting wet. "Really?"

Don nods.

Leo rubs his head. "You want me to... get him back in?"

"It would do him a world of good." Don looks up from his work again. "But not today. I promised him something else. And don't tell him I put you up to it."

"I won't," Leo says. He remembers a promise he made to Mike himself, and realizes he doesn't know if he can make good on it. "But while I'm thinking of it - did April give us any more money?"

Don stares at him. "Why are you thinking of that?" Immediately, he holds up a hand, stopping Leo from answering. "No, never mind. We have -"

Leo raises a hand too. "Don't tell me how much. Just yes or no."

"Yes," Don says. "And while we're exchanging inapropros information, when is this interview of yours?"

"Tomorrow," Leo says, half a second before he realizes how bad that sounds.

"What?" Don twists in his seat, to face Leo more directly. "And you're only telling me now?"

"Donnie, it's not like that." _But it is._ "I only found out -" _That sounds even worse._ "I -"

Don is looking at him with something almost like pity.

"Don..."

"Leo, don't."

He discovers his mouth is still open, waiting for the right words to tumble out. He closes it, shifts back on the desk.

"Does it make sense to _you?_" Don asks. His usual calm is back, his momentary irritation seeming to have vanished as quickly as it came.

Leo nods mutely.

"Then you don't have to explain," Don says. As if sensing that the words are not enough, he rests his hand on Leo's knee and squeezes reassuringly. "How many times have you trusted _me_, even though you didn't understand my reasoning?"

Leo considers this. _Often enough._ "And you're sure? About Mike?"

"Positive," Don says. He glances back at the screen. "Now go away. He's coming."

"Is -"

"_Go away._" Don reaches out, suddenly impatient, and virtually shoves Leo off the desk. "You were never here."

Leo stumbles under the pressure of Don's hands, and heads for the stairs.

"And take your mask!"

Leo turns, catches the strip of fabric twisting towards him, and makes himself scarce, just as Mike comes in the front door.

* * *

Don meets Mike halfway between the door and the computer. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"Yeah, well, don't shoot things at me," Mike says sourly. He scratches at his arm, and sawdust snows gently to the concrete floor.

Don steers him towards the former alcove, with a light hand on his back. "I downloaded one of those games you like, and configured the computer so it will run. It's yours for the rest of the evening."

Mike smiles in spite of himself. "Really?"

They reach the desk. Don pulls the chair out for Mike, and gestures him into it. "Really." He hits a combination of keys, and the game's opening screen fills the monitor, accompanied by tinny music.

Mike sighs happily at the familiar intro. "You redeem yourself well, grasshopper."

Don relaxes. He is forgiven.

"Look at this floor." Splinter's voice comes from nowhere, addressing no one in particular. "It is very dusty. Someone ought to sweep it."

Don gets the broom. His penance is incomplete.

* * *

After dinner, Leo shuts himself in his room to finish the dragon. Tiny curving strokes to outline the scales, thin parings to create the layered effect of reptilian skin.

(Not like his own. He and his brothers have always simply had _skin_, without hair or scales or feathers or any of those other things Donnie's science books say vertebrates are supposed to be covered with.)

He lowers the knife. The dragon is complete, as vibrant and lifelike as any of his other creations.

He feels nothing for it.

He puts the carving on the shelf, puts the knife in his knapsack, and goes to bed.

* * *

"Michelangelo."

"Yeah Sensei."

"It is very late."

"I know. I know. One more level."

* * *

He dies eleven times before making it to the next level. Then he plays two more levels. Then he goes to bed.

* * *

_"I want to see my brothers. I WANT TO SEE MY BROTHERS!"_

_The Utrom regarded him calmly. "You cannot see them now."_

_He tried to struggle, but the healing compound that encased him contained such a powerful analgesic that he couldn't even feel his limbs. Couldn't move. "Where are they? What happened to them? Are they all right?"_

_"They are in another wing," the Utrom told him. "You can see them later."_

_"Now." He rested his head back against the padded edge of the tank, tried not to give in to the numbness. "Now. Please."_

_"Not now. They are undergoing treatment."_

_"What -" He fought again, to at least sit up, to at least look like a __**person**__, and not an invalid. "What are you doing to them?"_

_"Relax, Leonardo." The Utrom tended to the tubes snaking into the tank, tubes that controlled the composition of the healing gel. "We are caring for them, just as you would."_

_A scream echoed down the white hallway outside his room._

* * *

Leo pitches upright in bed, his own scream ringing from the concrete walls.

Within seconds, the light snaps on, and Raph is there, the harsh light glinting off his sai.

Then the rest of his family is there too, alive and unhurt and worried about him.

_There had been no scream. The Utroms had made him rest. Later, they had brought him a floating video screen, its display divided into four quarters._

_Raph. Don. Mike. Splinter._

_He had seen them, talked to them, known they were all right._

_Then he had turned his head to the side, and said softly to the attendant: "Take it away."_

_He hadn't talked to his family again for a week._

_Every morning the Utroms would offer him the screen, tell him his family was asking about him. Every morning he would refuse, and every morning they would tactfully drop the subject for another twenty-four hours._

_Then Don had gotten well enough to climb out of the healing bath, and he had come to Leo's door, and he hadn't taken no for an answer._

"Leo?" Don leans over him, concern etching his face. "Leo, talk to me."

_"I don't want to talk to them."_

Memory and nightmare blur in his mind, confusing him.

"I'm sorry." He kicks off the blankets, pushes Don back. Moves brothers and father out of his way as he circles the room, snatching up knapsack, dragon, bandana, weapons. "I'm sorry."

Then he's gone, leaving the Lair, searching for a place where he doesn't have to face his failure, where the only one he needs to apologize to is himself.


	11. A Refuge

Chapter Ten – A Refuge

She only finds the note because it crinkles under her slipper when she steps on it.

_Sleeping on your couch. L._

She ties her bathrobe more snugly around herself, and goes out.

He is, as advertised, sleeping on the couch – curled on his side, the back of one hand pressed to his snout, a knuckle clamped between his teeth.

She stands there, watching him, and he comes awake with a soft intake of breath. His eyes slit open to regard her with a steady focus it usually takes her ten minutes and a cup of coffee to achieve.

She holds up the note, written on a sheet torn from her own kitchen pad. "Thanks for the warning."

His knuckle slides from his mouth, a thin string of saliva snapping back from it. "Thanks for the couch," he mumbles thickly.

"No problem." She folds the note, slips it into the pocket of her robe, and regards him with the loving sternness of a surrogate mother. "Am I feeding you breakfast too?"

"No." A thin whisper. His gaze has fallen away from her, to rest dully on the carpet.

She leaves him alone.

* * *

When she comes out of the kitchen, newly fortified with caffeine and toast, he's sleeping again.

He doesn't wake as she shuffles back and forth, getting ready for the day. He doesn't wake when she tucks a note of her own into the cross of his sword-sheaths, where they're propped against the couch.

Where he's sure to find it.

_In the shop. Help yourself to anything. A._

* * *

Late in the morning, she sells a piece of antique jewelry to a very sweet young woman, and listens in satisfaction to the ring of the bell as the happy customer goes out through the front door.

Then she feels a light step on the floorboard, a ghost of a touch on her shoulder, and the door to the stock room closes softly behind her.

_"Whattaya want a little room like that for?" the architect had asked, when she had insisted on adding it to the plans for the reconstruction of Second Time Around._

_"For refrigeration," she'd said, pointing to a duct she had drawn on the blueprints. "See, the cooling unit goes here."_

_The architect had rubbed his head. "Cooling unit? That's gonna cost an extra –"_

_"Never mind," she'd interrupted. "I'm getting it through another company."_

Of course, there had been no cooling unit. After the last coat of paint had been slapped on by the professionals, and all of the contractors had packed up and gone away, Donatello and Raphael had done a quick construction job to put a sturdy metal door over the "vent" - really a recreation of the escape route that had saved their lives when the store burned down. April had bought a padlock for the little door, to prevent anyone from sneaking in that way, and the key to it was hidden in the room Leo now occupied, the room that had, in fact, become something of a storage space.

"April," he whispers, from the crack of the door. "Do you have that book with the stories in it?"

She passes it to his outstretched hand. "So," she says. "Finally curious what people are saying?"

"Not really," he says, even as she hears the leather creak and the heavy pages flip. "But it would be very strange if the reporter asked me about it, and I hadn't read them."

"Ah," she says. "So it's purely for academic interest."

He hums softly, a kind of verbal nod.

"You don't believe there's anything to it, though?" she asks.

"No."

She pulls a rag from beneath the counter, wipes a film of dust from an old music box on a nearby shelf. "Why?" she says. "If you don't mind my asking. I mean, I always thought you were… spiritual, in that way."

A quiet flip of pages.

"Can I tell you a story?" he asks.

"Sure." She moves out from behind the counter, inspects the glass cases, wipes away a smudgy fingerprint.

He's silent for a moment. "If anyone comes in," he says, "pretend I'm the stockboy."

She doesn't reply to that. He knows she'll go along with it, knows she won't give him away.

"This is a story the Ancient One told me," he begins, "one time when it had been snowing for three days. It's… interesting to think about."

She hears the soft slide of leather on wood, as he puts the book on a shelf, and then he begins.

"Once upon a time, in Edo," he says, "there was a greedy lord and a clever peasant.

"One day the peasant went to his lord, bowed low, and spoke respectfully.

"'My lord,' he said, 'I would like to ask you a great favor.'

"The lord was not much given to granting favors, but it was his duty at least to listen. 'Yes,' he said, 'what is it?'

"'My lord,' the peasant said, 'I am entertaining guests this evening. But I have no pot with which to brew tea for them. May I borrow yours?'

"The lord thought about this. He was a jealous man, and did not like to share his possessions – especially with people he did not trust to return them.

"The peasant sensed his master's hesitancy. 'Please, my lord,' he said, without looking up from the floor. 'It will be very shameful if I cannot serve my guests tea. I promise I will return your pot tomorrow.'

"The lord could not easily refuse such a simple request, not without making the other peasants in his domain grumble about what a cruel and unfair master he was. He knew he would have to agree. But as he was dreading putting his valuable porcelain teapot in the hands of a clumsy peasant, he remembered that he had an old clay pot, one he never used.

"The lord called for one of his servants to bring him this old pot, and he gave it to the peasant. The peasant bowed low, thanked his master profusely, and left.

"The next morning the peasant returned, grinning broadly. 'Good news, my lord!' he said.

"'What is it?' the lord asked suspiciously, for he did not expect much from an uneducated peasant.

"The peasant presented the teapot - clean and undamaged - with a flourish. Then he also produced a little clay teacup. 'Congratulations, your Lordship!' he said. 'Your teapot has given birth!'

"'That is nonsense!' the lord said, even as he snatched pot and cup from the peasant. 'Teapots do not give birth!'

"'Begging your pardon, my lord,' the peasant said, bowing low, 'but your teapot was pregnant and last night it gave birth. Its child, the teacup, is rightfully yours. Being an honest man, I have brought both pot and cup to you.'

"The lord thought this was very strange, but secretly he was pleased. It was in his nature to love any increase to his own wealth, even if it was only a little clay teacup. 'Very well,' he said, and dismissed the peasant back to his work.

"Several days later, the peasant again called on his lord. 'My lord,' he said, bowing low and speaking respectfully, 'I must ask you another favor.'

"'Yes?' the lord said. 'What is it?' He was still suspicious, but he remembered how granting favors to this peasant had worked to his profit before, so he listened with interest.

"'My daughter is coming to visit me from far away,' the peasant said, 'and she is bringing her children. I am afraid I do not have quite enough chopstick rests to set the table properly for them all. May I please borrow one of yours?'

"The lord thought about this momentarily. Then he called for one of his servants to bring him a bone chopstick rest – not an extremely valuable thing, but fine enough to set on a table for a special occasion. This he gave to the peasant.

"'Bring it back to me when your daughter leaves,' he said. 'And also bring me any children it might have,' he thought to himself, but he did not say that for fear of sounding like a fool.

"'Yes, my lord!' the peasant said. And he bowed low and left his master's presence.

"At the end of the week, the peasant returned, bearing the bone chopstick rest and two beautiful chopsticks, also of bone. 'Good news again, my lord!' he said, with a wide smile. 'Your chopstick rest was also pregnant, and it had twins!'

"The lord snatched chopsticks and chopstick rest, and inspected them closely. The chopstick rest was undamaged, the chopsticks well-made, and the further increase to his wealth delighted him so much that he almost forgot that chopstick rests do not give birth.

"Instead of protesting the strange event, the lord praised the peasant for his honest behavior, and eagerly asked him whether he might like to borrow something else. 'A candle-holder?' the lord suggested. 'A robe?'

"But the peasant only shook his head. 'No, my lord,' he said. 'Thank you, but I need none of these things.'

"The lord was disappointed. 'Well,' he said, 'if you should think of anything...'

"'Actually, my lord...' the peasant said slowly. 'There is one thing I would like to borrow.'

"'Name it!' the lord declared.

"'I am going to visit my son soon,' the peasant said. 'I am happy to go, but the way is dangerous and I would feel better if I had a weapon at my side. Might I borrow your sword, sir?'

"The lord hesitated. His sword was well-crafted and very expensive. But, lending the teapot and the chopstick rest had brought him good fortune, so...

"'Take it!' he said, lifting the weapon from the wall with his own hands, and giving it to the peasant. 'With my good wishes!'

"The lord waited anxiously all week, for the return of the peasant and the sword. But when the peasant finally appeared, it was with downcast expression.

"'Why, what is wrong!' the lord exclaimed. 'Where is my sword? Did it not give birth to a dagger?'

"The peasant shook his head sadly. 'Bad news, my lord,' he said. 'While returning from my son's house, I was attacked in the road. I got away safely, but your sword was killed in battle.'

"'What!' the lord roared. 'That is nonsense! Swords cannot die!'

"'Begging your pardon, my lord,' the peasant said, bowing obsequiously, 'but if you believe that teapots and chopstick rests can give birth, then you must also believe that swords can die.'"

Silence in the shop. April had become so entranced in the story, that she had almost forgotten to watch for customers. Her rag is a lifeless heap under her hand, and she can't remember whether or not she already wiped this cabinet.

"What does it mean?" she asks.

"What do _you_ think it means?" Leo returns.

She moves again, wiping the cabinet in case she hasn't yet, then cleaning the next, straightening some out-of-print books an elderly gentleman had been leafing through earlier, noting that her display of fancy hats is due for a new arrangement.

"Four things," she says, and this time he makes a small noise of invitation. _Go ahead._ "First, don't believe everything you hear. Second, learn to take the bad luck with the good. Third, don't be greedy, and fourth," she pauses in her work, so she'll be able to hear his reaction, "never trust a peasant."

He laughs. "Very good."

She returns to the counter and puts the rag back in its place. "But what does it mean to _you?_"

"It means…" He sighs. "It means that as long as I don't believe my carvings are responsible for the good things that have happened to your customers, I also don't have to believe they're responsible for the _bad_ things that have happened to my family."

"Oh, Leo…" she says softly.

Maybe he hears her, maybe he doesn't. Either way, his next remark is decidedly different in tone.

"Are you hungry?" he asks. "I could make some lunch."

"Oh," she says again. "Leo, no offense, but I've heard stories about your lack of skill in the kitchen."

The door to the stock room swings open, and he smiles at her as he slips along the wall towards the back staircase, the guestbook tucked under his arm. "I assure you they are greatly exaggerated."

Then he's gone.

* * *

When she gets upstairs, twenty minutes later, the kitchen is still in one piece. On the table is a pair of tuna sandwiches – hardly a demonstration of great cooking talent, but a perfectly good lunch nonetheless.

"I hope you like tuna," he says over his shoulder, as he stirs something on the stove. "I mean, I assume you do, since it was in your cabinet…"

"Tuna is fine," she says. "What's in the pot?"

"Rice."

"Rice?" she sniffs. "It smells strange."

"Don't worry; it's supposed to."

"Leo…"

"No, really." He turns and holds the spoon out to her, inviting her to taste. "If you put some seasonings in the water as it boils, it infuses the rice. It's very good."

She looks at the proffered utensil suspiciously. "What did you use?"

"Rosemary and tarragon." He watches her expression. "It's good, I promise. I got this from Mike."

She tastes carefully. It _is_ good. She nods and hums appreciatively.

Then she turns back to the table, to the other thing there that had caught her attention: a foot-tall wooden dragon. "That wasn't there this morning, was it?"

"Hm?" He glances back at her. "Oh, no. I left it in the basement when I came in."

"Good," she says. "I thought I was losing my mind." She pulls out a chair and sits, and a moment later he joins her.

"This is amazing," she says, referring more to the dragon than to the sandwich. "How did you do the…" She trails off. His gaze is elsewhere, as if he's trying to avoid her words. "Leo? What's wrong?"

He lowers his sandwich, resting it against the plate. "April, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," she says.

He looks up, watching her sideways. "When you told me… that people change, and I should learn to love them as they are now." His gaze flicks to the sandwich, as if the answers to all his problems are somewhere in the shredded tuna. "What if I _can't?_ What if I don't like the people they've become?" He lowers his head and his voice. "What if _they_ don't like who _I've_ become?"

"Oh, Leo." For a moment she can't give any more answer than that, and she simply takes stock of the moment. The sandwich in her hands, the smell of warm spices in the air. The sun on the other side of the drawn shades. The narrow table and yawning gulf of experience that separate her from this giant turtle she's come to call friend.

Then she starts again. "Leo," she says, "you and your brothers love each other more than any siblings I've ever met. I don't think not liking each other is your problem."

He frowns. "But -"

"No, hear me out." She puts her sandwich down, reaches for a napkin, wipes her fingers. "I think the problem is that you have to _live_ together."

He pushes his plate away slowly, trying to figure out where she's going.

"You're at that age where people start to think about moving out of the house," she says. "About having a relationship with their families where they still love each other, and still enjoy spending time together, but where they don't have to put up with each other's annoying habits 24/7."

He opens his mouth to protest, but she cuts him off. "Don't tell me there's _nothing_ you dislike about them. I know it's not true, you know it's not true, and it would be a little creepy if it _were_ true."

He shuts his mouth again, and just listens.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," she says gently, "but I think the problem is that you're in this for the long haul, and the situation is not quite good enough to imagine spending your whole life this way."

He lowers his gaze. "I can't do this forever," he says softly. "With Raph... I think he hates me..."

"Raph does not hate you."

"You haven't heard what he's been saying to me."

"_You_ didn't hear what he said while you were away."

Leo raises his eyes again, searching her face, trying to decide how to interpret this.

"You know," she says, "it took me a long time to understand him."

He watches her curiously.

"For a long time after I met you guys," she says, "I thought he was going to kill you all."

Leo recoils in shock. "April! He would never -"

"No, listen," she says. "Do you know those people who keep wild animals? Tigers, or bears...? And they think the animal is tame, that it would never hurt them?"

His face clouds over, and he nods tersely.

"And then," she says, "one day the animal eats the owner's face, and if the owner is still alive, they lay there wondering how that happened. And, sorry for the analogy, but I thought Raph was like one of those animals."

He watches her stonily, waiting to hear how the metaphor ends.

"You would tease him," she says, "all of you, and I could tell it was good-natured, but I could also see that it made him angry... and, I'm sorry, but I kept having these visions of a slightly stupid zookeeper poking a bear. He can do that, because the bear likes him, but he's not going to get away with it forever. One day, that bear is going to snap."

"It's not like that," Leo says tightly.

"I know," she says. "I _know_, Leo. I understood, eventually, that you _could_ get away with it forever. Because he _loves_ you. Enough to let you hurt him very badly, and still want you in his life."

"I don't want to hurt him," Leo says, and there's something desperate in his voice. "I never want to. I know that I - I suffocate him, and I wish he had a place to go where it wasn't like that, but... you're right, there's not..."

She lays her hand on his forearm, where it rests on the table. "He wouldn't go, even if he could. Do you know that, Leo? Do you know how lost he is, when you're not around?"

He watches her with infinite sadness.

"He'll never admit it," she says, "but it's true. He needs you. And - Leo, stop - that's not a bad thing."

He wipes his eyes with his free hand. "Why do we do this, April?" he asks. "Why is it so hard just to be honest with each other?"

"I don't know, Leo. That's something you have to work out with _him_." She pats his arm again, and withdraws her hand. "Listen, I have to go back to work. Will you be okay?"

He nods, then reaches out to push the dragon across the table to her. "Here. For you. For the store. I don't know. Just get rid of it."

She picks it up. It's surprisingly heavy for such a graceful figure. "Okay," she says. "I won't be long. I'll close up early and come back for the interview."

He nods again, absently, and she turns to go. But in the kitchen doorway, she pauses and turns back.

"Hey, Leo?" she ventures. "Can I ask you a question?"

He raises his head, but doesn't look at her. "What is it?"

She resettles the dragon in her arms. "All these different animals... Why haven't you made a turtle yet?"

He laughs hollowly, his face towards the shaded window. "April... I've spent my whole life making a turtle. If I ever finish, I'll let you know."

* * *

At ten to three she locks the front door of the shop, turns the sign to CLOSED, and heads back up the stairs to her apartment.

Leo is sitting on the couch, a knee drawn to his shoulder, the guestbook open in his lap. He glances up when she comes in.

"Before I forget," she says, and opens the front closet to retrieve a small paper bag. "These are for you." She hands him the bag, and opens her fist to offer him a folded scrap of paper.

He takes the paper first. "What's this?" he asks, though she suspects he already knows.

"Your tab," she replies, and he nods, slipping the paper into his belt without looking at it.

Then he takes the bag, and unrolls the top. He peers in, and she waits for his verdict on the assortment of incense she selected. "Mm." He rerolls the bag carefully. "Thank you." He sets the bag by his foot, closes the book in his lap, and glances apprehensively at the phone. "Is it time?"

"Near enough," she says, and settles in the other chair. "Are you ready?"

Something shifts in his jaw, his shoulders, and she has the fleeting sense that in his mind he is facing an enemy army. She has seen this change come over him before, in the brief seconds before he drew his swords and plunged into battle.

But he only relaxes again - fractionally - and nods. "I'm ready."

"You'll do fine," she says. "It's only a conversation."

He doesn't seem convinced, but it's too late to back out now.

She smiles reassuringly.

Picks up the phone.

And dials.

* * *

Notes

I'd like to take credit for the story Leo tells in this chapter, but it isn't really mine. It's a somewhat-modified retelling of the short children's story "Shrewd Todie and Lyzer the Miser", by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Regrettably, I have not been able to find the text of this story online.


	12. The Camp

Chapter Eleven – The Camp

For a few moments, there's silence in the Lair. Then Raphael breaks it with a bitten-off curse and the clash of his sai as he slams them together, collecting them in one hand.

He turns to storm out.

"Raphael," Splinter says sharply. "Do not go after him."

Raphael spins back, glowering, pressing the boundaries of how he can act towards his father. "Who's goin' after 'im?" He shifts his weight from his aggressive stance, leaning instead towards the door. "_I'm_ going t' bed."

The two of them hold each other's gaze. Then Splinter nods, minutely, and Raphael pivots and paces out of the room.

"Is it just me," Michelangelo asks, "or did he look a little _possessed?_" He pauses, blinks. "Leo, I mean."

"He was barely awake," Donatello says. He watches Michelangelo carefully. "It was just a nightmare. He'll shake it off." He smoothes his hand over his brother's arm. "Come on. We should go back to bed too."

Michelangelo hesitates, then allows himself to be led out of the room.

While Splinter remains, staring at the empty and rumpled bed.

* * *

_"I will see my son."_

_"He does not wish visitors."_

_"I will see my son," Splinter repeated calmly._

_Then he stood there, for three hours, his hands crossed on top of his walking stick, his face betraying no hint of the lingering pain from his deep burns._

_Finally, they let him in._

_Leonardo turned his head to the door, but as soon as he saw who was entering, he averted his face again._

_Splinter settled himself on a stool that had been placed beside the healing tank. "Leonardo."_

_"Leave me alone." It was the soft, pleading request of one who was powerless to supply his own needs._

_"I cannot do that."_

_Leonardo looked resolutely at the opposite wall, and said nothing._

_Splinter watched strange fluids trickle in and out of the tank. "You have done no wrong, my son."_

_Leonardo did not reply._

_"There is no great victory without great risk," Splinter said. "When you have an opportunity to defeat evil, it is not dishonorable to gamble your forces on that chance. It is courageous and right."_

_"They're not my __**forces**__," Leonardo bit out. "They're my __**family**__."_

_"They are both," Splinter replied. "And this will not be the last time you will need to make such a decision."_

_Leonardo was silent again, but Splinter could see tears trickling down his cheeks. He placed his hand on his son's head, the only place Leonardo could still feel a comforting touch._

_"Leonardo -"_

_"Please don't."_

_Splinter removed his hand. Leonardo could feel no physical pain, in the numbing gel, but it was clear he was hurting deeply from guilt and shame and the humiliation of dependency. Now was not the time to force unwanted company and conversation on him._

_"We will speak of this later," he said, and waited until Leonardo nodded._

_He rose from his stool. "It is not often that I see you lead your brothers in battle," he said, "and it is even less often that I find fault in your leadership." He began to move slowly across the room, speaking over his shoulder. "You performed admirably, Leonardo. I am not disappointed." He placed his hand on the doorknob. "And, my son..." he said quietly, just before he opened the door and went out, "do not forget on whose orders we were at that building in the first place."_

_He wasn't sure whether Leonardo heard him._

* * *

Splinter makes the bed, preparing it for Leonardo's return. As he folds under the sheet corners, he remembers fondly the times when each day ended with him tucking his sons in and kissing them good night. Now, more often than not, he is the first to retire. His sense of well-being comes not in the evening, when his sons are safely wrapped in their blankets, but in the morning, when they greet him in the dojo and he sees that they have come back whole and unharmed from their nocturnal activities.

He turns the light off as he leaves.

In his own room, he lights a candle, and kneels on the mats, letting his mind walk over eighteen years.

From first words and crawling to advanced ninjutsu and conversations that go over his head. Hugs punctuated by tiny hands that grabbed at his fur, gifts of shiny things found in the sewers, a carved walking stick from the land of his ancestors. There had been scraped knees and wounded egos, broken bones and sleepless nights when he wondered whether the next breath would be the last. There had been winters and springs, lessons learned and desperate questions he couldn't answer.

He had given them weapons. He had stood outside the bathroom for six hours, listening to the shower as Raphael tried to wash off the stain of the first kill. He had taught Michelangelo the secret healing properties of herbs and he had watched in bafflement as Donatello became expert in areas Splinter himself was barely aware of.

He had helped Leonardo with his fear of heights. He had looked up one day and realized that his sons were taller than he was.

For a time he had let them revel in their strength, allowing them to lift him and carry him around just to prove they could. But he had made it clear that he was still the Sensei. He could still make them feel small, and he still knew when they were trying to sneak past him.

"Raphael."

The footsteps halt.

"Enter."

Raphael sidles in through the door, looking morose. "I was just walkin' around."

"Kneel."

Raphael's fingers twitch, but he obediently crosses the mats and sits in _seiza_ on the opposite side of the low table.

"I wasn't goin' after him," Raphael says, preemptively denying the likely accusation.

"And yet you cannot sleep."

Raphael shrugs noncommittally, but he can't seem to meet his father's eyes.

"Raphael -"

"I know where he is, anyway," Raphael blurts out.

Splinter raises a brow.

Raphael continues staring into his lap. Then he tips his head sideways, looking at his father out of the corner of his eye. "He went to April's."

"And why do you think that?"

Raphael looks surprised that Splinter hasn't come to the same conclusion. "Interview's today," he says shortly. "You know how he likes to be _early_."

"He had not told me which day..." Splinter murmurs.

Raphael's face hardens again, and he looks at the floor. "Typical."

"That is not true."

"Is lately."

"Do not take that tone with me, Raphael."

Raphael glares up from under his brows. "He didn't tell you, did he? Point kind of proves itself."

"One example does not make a rule."

"Don't worry, Sensei. I've got loads of other _examples_."

Splinter backs off momentarily. The candle flickers. Raphael's hands curl and uncurl on his knees.

"Raphael," he begins again, "it might be fairly said that _you_ are not known for openly sharing information with others."

"So?"

"So do you feel it is fair for you to judge Leonardo for the same shortcoming?"

Raphael raises his head defiantly. "I can judge him for whatever the hell I want. If he's gonna act like an a- ... like a jerk, then I can call him on it."

Splinter nods, accepting the point. "But is it not also the case that when Leonardo 'calls' you on your behavior, you often respond by leaving the Lair? It seems to me that he has done no more than what you would have in a similar situation."

"I see where this is goin', Sensei," Raphael says. "You're tryin' to get me to admit that if it's not okay for Leo to run out, then I shouldn't do it either."

Before Splinter can even decide whether or not to point out the other possible interpretation, Raphael proves that he has already seen it.

"But I can just as easily say that it's okay for _both_ of us." Raphael leans forward. "I don't _care_ if he goes to April's. I don't care if he goes to the freaking _moon_. I'm not goin' after him, and if he never comes back then that's fine with me." He sits straight again, seeming satisfied with himself.

Splinter only regards him stonily. "You are rarely open with your family, Raphael," he says, "and willingly or unwillingly, you often say the opposite of how you feel. So you will forgive me if I do not believe you when you say you wish for Leonardo to leave us again. But if you continue to act this way, you will make _him _believe it. And you will lose him. I advise you to think carefully about this."

Raphael listens, his jaw set and his expression impassive.

Splinter glances meaningfully towards the door. "I have nothing further to say to you."

Raphael stands, bows stiffly, and walks out.

Splinter watches the candle flame dance on its wick. Then he snuffs it. His whiskers vibrate to the passage of the smoke towards the ceiling.

* * *

Hours later, when everyone is sleeping and the Lair is silent, a figure slips down the stairs, moving from the catwalks to the floor of the main room.

He stands for a while in the darkness, listening. Then he crosses the floor, to the corner occupied by Donatello's desk.

He runs his hands over the computer, the gadgets strewn across the work surface. His movements are not those of a person fumbling in blackness, not like a blind person using his fingers as a replacement for eyes. He is simply touching, absently confirming the presence of known objects.

He reaches into the void, and turns on the lamp. The shaded bulb illuminates half of the vast chamber with a pale glow, then gives up and leaves the other half in darkness.

The light glints off the water in the middle of the room, shifting with the currents, gilding each ripple. The dancing reflections draw him closer, and he moves to the edge of the pool, staring down into it.

_"He's on the edge of panic all the time. Do you know, he's hardly been in the water since -?"_

_"You want me to... get him back in?"_

_"It would do him a world of good. And don't tell him I put you up to it."_

The figure crouches. He watches the water a moment longer, then extends his hand to it, letting the ripples jump up to bump against his fingers.

_Two things, Donnie_, he thinks. _First, I only turned off the speaker. And second..._

_I'm not scared._

A splash echoes off both sides of the Lair, folds back into itself, and fades.

* * *

Raph lies in his hammock, tossing and turning as his internal clock ticks slowly towards morning. He's determined not to get up a minute before he normally does. Just to prove that Leo's histrionics aren't going to throw off his daily routine.

By the time ten o'clock rolls around, his hammock has started to feel too much like an ensnaring net, and he's _more_ than ready to work out some aggression in the dojo.

Feet on floor. Belt, pads, mask, sai; leave room and vault railing; enter the dojo and bow. Scowl at Mikey for being there first, for looking way too bright and chipper.

"Morning," Mike says.

"Morning," Raph grunts back.

"Splinter says we're on our own today."

Raph settles into his warm-up stretches. "Yeah?"

"Mm." Mike pauses thoughtfully. "Seemed to be in kind of a bad mood."

Raph makes a noncommittal 'hmph' noise. A moment later he asks, "Where the hell's Donnie?"

"I'm here," Don says, appearing in the doorway with mask over his shoulder and bo in hand.

Raph regards him critically. "You're late. And you're not ready."

"I'm not late," Don replies calmly, "and this is how I always show up." He lays down his bo and spreads his mask between his hands.

"Don't do it anymore."

Don knots his mask behind his head, then raises a brow. "Okay, Raph. I know we all had a bad night. You don't have to take it out on me."

"I get to take it out on _everybody_," Raph replies, "seeing as Master Splinter left me in charge of training." He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. "On the mats, Princess."

"Um, actually," Mike says, from the floor, "Master Splinter left _me_ in charge of training. Seeing as I was here first."

Raph stares down at him. "You're kidding."

"Nope." Mike leans forward from his leg-spread and pushes up into a one-armed handstand, then flips over and drops back to his feet. "You can go bother him if you don't believe me, but I don't really recommend it."

Raph glances at the door, looks narrow-eyed at Mikey, weighs his options, and surrenders. "Fine."

"Good." Mike dusts his hands off, then pulls his nunchaku from his belt and tosses them to Don. "Trade weapons."

"Fuck, Mikey," Raph says, even as he catches the bo Don flips to him. "_Really_ not in the mood."

"Did I say identity-switching?" Mike asks, and waits for Raph to grunt something that might have been 'no'. "Simple cross-training. We haven't done it in a while." He points to Raph's sai, and makes a beckoning gesture. "Hand 'em over."

Raph glares at Mike, then draws his sai from his belt and flings them side-arm, one after the other. Mike plucks them out of the air, flips them deftly along his forearms, and sinks into a defensive crouch.

"Come on, then," he says.

* * *

"You're getting a lot better," Mike says, when Don gives him back his nunchaku at the end of the session. "Just remember to move _with_ the rotation."

"I know," Don sighs.

"It's cool." Mike inspects his weapons, then replaces them in his belt. "It's a little counter-intuitive, right?" He smiles. "Sometimes the shortest path _isn't_ the best."

"Yes, exactly," Don says. "You have to, um -" He describes a little circle in the air with his finger.

"Mm-hmm." Mike turns to hand the sai back to Raph, as Raph slaps the bo roughly into Don's outstretched palm.

"Yer grips are clumsy and yer defense is weak," Raph announces to Mike. "Get better." He cuts his eyes at Don. "Shove it."

And he stomps out.

Don watches the doorway until Raph's footsteps fade away. "He gets more delightful every day, doesn't he?"

"Nah, he hit terminal jerkitude a long time ago. You want some breakfast?"

"Indubitably."

* * *

Don gravitates to the kitchen cabinets, to paw through the boxes and canisters and see what looks edible. Raph has already gone, disappearing back to his room with a fistful of what might have been protein bars.

A _clang_ catches his attention, and he turns to see Mike setting a flame under the frying pan.

"What's this?" he asks.

Mike glances over his shoulder, cracking an egg into the pan without even looking. "Called cooking, Donnie. A tough concept, I know."

Don smiles and leans against the counter. "Making enough for two?"

Another egg yolk drops into the sizzling pan. "Am now."

Don crosses to the table, pulls out a chair, and sits down. "You seem to be in a good mood," he comments, as two more eggs join their brethren.

Mike shrugs and pokes the watery mess with a spatula. "Someone has to be."

Don hesitates, unsure whether he should bring up the subject. "But yesterday?"

Mike rests the tip of the spatula in the pan, his other hand absently adjusting the heat controls. "Was yesterday." He stirs the eggs vigorously, sudden motion where a moment ago there had been stillness. "I never dwell."

"That's -"

"A brilliant life philosophy, I know." Mike flips the solidifying eggs. "Some day you too may master the Tao of Mikey."

"Mike."

"Yeah bro."

Don opens his mouth again, then decides to let the subject drop. "Can I make the toast?"

"I dunno. You think you can handle it?"

"I will do my best."

* * *

Don leaves the kitchen thinking about his project for the day. He thinks about it determinedly, to drown out thoughts about Mike.

If Mike doesn't want to talk, Don won't pry. If Mike says he's fine, Don will believe him. If Mike decides to focus on the bright new day ahead of them, Don will -

"Ah!" _Clang clatter riiiiinnnngg._

Don, apparently, will not look where he's going, and will nearly trip over a pile of metal gratings.

He windmills his arms until he regains his balance, then rocks back on his heels and looks around to see whether anyone noticed his embarrassing blunder.

Splinter is peering out of the doorway of his room, eyebrows raised. "Good morning, Donatello."

"Good morning, Sensei." Don turns his gaze back to the floor in front of him, toes the rough-edged pieces, and futilely searches his memory for what they are and how they got there. "What is this?"

"It is not yours?"

"No..." Don looks around again, trying to figure out if one of the catwalks collapsed very quietly and broke into neat sections near his workspace. "I don't..."

Mike appears in the kitchen doorway, wiping down the frying pan with a dishtowel. "It's the gate from the access tunnel," he says. "Just needed some bolt cutters."

Then he disappears again.

Don has the strangest sense of déjà vu.

* * *

He moves the pieces of the grating to a place where he's less likely to trip over them in a moment of distraction, then sits at his desk and gets work done.

Mike wanders over, watches him calculate frequency ranges, then gets bored and drifts away again.

Sometime later he comes back, and stares silently at Don until Don sighs and asks him what he wants.

"Can I play my game?"

Don minimizes his e-mail - he was only half paying attention anyway - and slides his chair to the side. Mike pulls the second chair over from its place against the wall, and resumes his imaginary quest.

At some point, Raph slinks downstairs, rummages in the lockers for pencil and paper, then installs himself in a corner to write busily and at great length.

"Donnie."

"Mm?"

"Someone's IMing you again."

Don carefully twists two wires together. "No, I didn't leave the program running."

"Well, _something's_ blinking."

Don sets down his work, rubs his eyes to force them to focus on things bigger than a dime and more than six inches away, and looks at the monitor.

Then he reaches over Mike, takes the mouse, and maximizes another program.

"What is it?" Mike asks, and Don momentarily wonders whether he should make the interface more friendly to users other than himself.

It's a project for another day. For now, all he says is: "Leo's back."

* * *

A few minutes later, the door opens. Three heads turn to look as Leo closes the door behind him and then simply stands there, his hand on the wall. In his other hand is a paper bag.

"Leo?" Don asks, after a long moment of silence.

Leo lifts his head, as though his own name were some kind of post-hypnotic command. He crosses to the desk and wordlessly hands the bag to Mike. Fishes in his belt and offers a folded-up scrap of paper to Don.

Mike doesn't unroll the top of the bag. "You okay, bro?"

"Tuesday," Leo replies.

Mike blinks. "Huh?"

But Leo only turns, climbs the stairs, and shuts himself in his room. He doesn't come out until dinner.


	13. A Narrowing Distance

Chapter Twelve – A Narrowing Distance

Mike taps the back of his knuckles against the door. "Leo?"

No answer.

He knocks again, a little harder. "Leeeee-o."

He presses his ear to the door, but all within is silent.

"Well, dinner's ready," he says, just in case Leo is awake and listening. "I'll save you some..."

He turns away, but a shuffling noise and a soft click make him stop and turn back.

The door is open a sliver, and Leo is peering through the crack. He looks haggard, wiped-out.

"I'm coming," he says.

* * *

The atmosphere at the table is tense, fraught with a kind of expectant unease. There is one question on everyone's mind, and they are all waiting to see who will ask it.

Finally, it is Splinter who speaks first.

"How did the interview go?"

There is a subtle shift in the mealtime rhythm, a strategic re-timing of silverware to minimize clattering while Leo replies.

"It was -" His own fork hovers thoughtfully in the air. "Tiring."

Mike sneaks a glance around the table, to see how his brothers and father are reacting to this odd assessment, but his family members are strangely inscrutable.

"How so?" Splinter asks.

Leo lowers his fork, to poke it against his food. "Just - in the way that I had to think so carefully about everything I said." He spears a piece of meat. "I never knew a conversation could be so exhausting."

Leo puts the forkful in his mouth. The uncomfortable silence descends again. Mike takes another bite. It tastes dry.

"It went _well_," Leo says. "The reporter never knew I wasn't a normal teenager."

"But what did you _say?_" Don asks, his curiosity getting the better of him.

Leo only shakes his head, a small smile curving across his face. "Tuesday," he says.

"Dude," Mike says, "what the shell is _Tuesday?_"

"The article," Leo says, graciously passing up the opportunity to make an easy joke at Mike's expense. "It will be in Tuesday's newspaper. You can read it then."

Mike mentally saves the date. It seems like eons away.

* * *

Later that night, Raph lies in his hammock, thinking. One hand taps riffs against his plastron, endless variations on a theme. The other bounces a tennis ball off the wall, the steady _spoing_ - _tump_ providing a tempo for his rhythms.

The repetitive noise and the periodic feel of worn fuzz in his palm form an anchor for his whirling thoughts, drawing him back whenever he sinks too deep.

He wills himself to sink a little, to finally face the dark currents of his mind, but every time he panics and rises up again, to float just below the surface and curse himself for being everything Leo says he is.

_"__You don't even want to let go of your anger. Because you know what you'll find underneath._

"_Fear."_

His hand squeezes around the tennis ball, and he flings it hard against the wall.

He sinks again.

_I'm not afraid._

He had spent all night thinking about what Splinter said, and most of the day trying to put it into words. The notebook that lies on his floor has fewer empty pages now, and Raphael has a crushing sense of time, and opportunities, running out.

"_If you continue to act this way, you will make _him_ believe it. And you will lose him."_

His fingers clench against his plastron.

_So what if I do. He hasn't exactly been the best brother lately._

Another voice, a voice of darkness and self-hatred, replies to him.

_You haven't always been a great brother yourself._

_I do enough. I protect my family. I don't _abandon_ them._

_Leo didn't abandon you either. He was sent._

_Only because he was acting crazy. He should've pulled himself together._

_**Hypocrite.**_

The strength of the thought startles him. The returning tennis ball bounces off his fingers, drops to the floor, and rolls into a corner.

_I'm not as bad as he was. If I was as crazy as that, Master Splinter would've sent _me_ to Japan._

_He didn't send you because you're not as _good_ as Leo._

He stares at the ceiling.

_What?_

_Eighteen years of Master Splinter's lessons, and you haven't learned to control your anger. Why would it be different with another sensei? You're not worth the Ancient One's time._

He grits his teeth.

_I didn't want to go anyway._

_**Liar.**_

This time he's ready for it. He's not going to be talked to like that inside his own head.

_**I didn't want to go!**_

_**you did you did you did you did**_

_**Shut up!**_

_**YOU STILL DO!**_

The words roar inside his mind, and he feels like he's been thrown backwards against the hammock. For one moment, the waters of his soul become crystal clear, and he knows what he wants.

He rolls out of the hammock, scrambling for the notebook. He's grabbing the thought with both hands, but already he can feel it squirming through his fingers, dispersing back into the tumultuous sea within him. He finds an empty page and furiously begins to write the last letter.

It's a long time before he goes to bed.

* * *

_Michelangelo held out a paper bag to him. "I think this is for you, Sensei."_

_He knew what was in it before he even took it from his son's hands. After weeks of mold, chemicals, and overpowering lemon, the mingled scents of jasmine, sandalwood, and cinnamon were a welcome balm to his sensitive nose._

Splinter chooses a stick at random, sets it carefully in the makeshift burner, and lights it. By the time his sons arrive, the wafting heat will have carried the incense throughout the dojo, and the calming smell of it will greet them at the door.

* * *

Leo doesn't usually have a hard time getting up in the morning, but this is one of those days.

His brain still feels like sludge from the interview, and it makes his whole body feel heavy and useless.

He reaches down to rub his thigh, then makes his arms and legs lift him out of the bed and move him through the routine of getting dressed for practice.

He emerges from his room bleary-eyed, and shuffles down the stairs, feeling somehow much older than his years. Even more so when Michelangelo, self-proclaimed King of Sleeping In, passes him on the way down.

As he slowly crosses the floor of the main room, Leo is treated to the sight of Mike dancing backwards into the dojo, executing a kind of pirouetting bow as he goes in. "Dude," he says, as he comes back around to face Leo again, "am I a genius or what?"

Leo can't see what's so particularly brilliant about Mike's dance. Then he passes through the door of the dojo, and it hits him.

The gentle scent of pine needles.

"You're a genius," he agrees.

Master Splinter is sitting on the floor in the lotus position, his eyes closed. "Good morning, my sons," he says. "Please sit down."

Leo sits, breathes in, falls almost instantly into meditation. He senses Mike beside him, folding himself to the floor: the rustle of the tatami, the shiver of the reeds against his leg. Mike's warmth, his weight. The soft light of his spirit.

He can see Don and Raph's auras, too, moving through the Lair. He waits until his brothers enter the dojo, until he can feel them with his earthly senses. Then he lets go, releasing his spirit into the void. His body falls away, and there is only the light.

* * *

_"I see energy, now, when I meditate."_

All Raph sees is the inside of his own eyelids.

Which is a shame because, while Don could probably find something fascinating about eyelids, Raph doesn't think they're interesting at all, and this means that he's now facing an hour or more of sitting quietly with nothing but his own thoughts for distraction.

Unfortunately, his thoughts are exactly what he'd rather be distracted _from_.

He'd read over the letter so many times last night that now the words of it are stuck in his head, looping endlessly, like an annoying song that just won't go away.

He'd resolved to give the letter to Leo. It had been the only way he could get any sleep. But now, in daylight (or at least what passes for daylight in his underground home), he's second-guessing his decision. Scrutinizing every sentence, critiquing every word.

Raph shifts his weight back and forth, rocking on the rim of his shell. He decides he'll burn the letter.

He curls his toes and changes his mind again.

_"_You_ are good enough, Raph."_

Well, fine. Maybe the letter doesn't have to be perfect. Maybe it just has to be good enough. If Leo is true to his word, he'll accept it. And if not, then... at least no one will be able to say Raph didn't try. It won't be him who didn't make an effort.

So that's that.

He cracks open an eye, darting his gaze to the left to sneak a glance at Leo.

He sees Splinter looking back at him, silently reprimanding him for his lapse of focus.

He slams his eye shut, and determinedly thinks of nothing.

* * *

Leo wonders why Splinter's chi is ringing.

Then something pulls apart, and something slides down, and he's corporeal again.

He blinks back into the physical plane. For a moment his astral vision bleeds through, but then shape and sound separate and he understands that the ringing is coming not from Splinter but from the chimes in his hand.

The metal rods clink musically as Splinter lays them on the mat. "Well done, my sons."

A bow from the sensei, a bow from the students, and the ritual is complete.

Leo unfolds his legs and stretches them out, letting everyone else move past him on their way out of the room. But when he rises and turns, Don is still there, inspecting the seams of the sandbag as though there is something critically important about them.

"Donnie?"

Don rests his hand on the bag, and looks over his shoulder. "Never mind about Mike."

And then he too leaves, pushing gently off the bag as he goes. It swings in his wake, ticking off the seconds of stillness before Leo follows his brother out.

* * *

"- but Donnie likes the other one better. What do _you_ think?"

"I dunno, Mike, whatever." Raph's eyes slide to his brother's face, then flick back to the door.

Mike waves a hand in front of Raph's snout. "Dude, are you even listening to me?"

Raph smacks Mike's hand away, then snatches the cereal box he's holding. "No."

"Well, _obviously_," Mike says. "If you had been, you'd know that box is empty."

Raph shakes the package, hears only the weak crinkle of plastic, and tosses the whole thing at Mike's head.

_Thomp._

"Hey!"

It's unsatisfying.

Something in him leaps as footsteps approach the kitchen doorway, but it's only Don who appears on the threshold. He shifts his weight back, and his shell impacts heavily against the corner of the counter.

"So, _Don_," Mike says, passing that brother a presumably non-empty box of cereal, and drawing up a chair to sit unnecessarily close to him. "We're out of Sugar Puffs again. What say we hit the Mega Mart tonight and get some more?"

Don pauses over his no-brand corn flakes. "You know, Mike," he says slowly, "there's probably a _reason_ the store throws out so many boxes of that stuff."

"Not followin' ya, bro," Mike says cheerfully.

Don just shakes his head. "Never mind."

"Yeah!" Mike punches the air. "Mega Mart!"

Leo chooses that moment to make his entrance, and Raph immediately busies himself with pretending not to watch his eldest brother's every move.

"Mega Mart?" Leo asks.

"Mike is set on his sugar fix," Don explains, "but those of us who live in the _real_ world would like to look for parts for the heating system, so we don't freeze this winter." He accompanies this argument with an affectionate elbow jab in Michelangelo's direction.

"The heat doesn't work?"

"Doubt it."

Leo crosses to the cabinet to get a bowl. "Sorry, Mike, you're trumped."

"Aw, come on." Mike reaches down to scoop up the discarded cereal box, and places it reverently on the table, as if to show his brothers what they would be missing out on. "It's barely October. The heat can wait."

Don pushes the gaudy box out of his sightline. "Says the grasshopper."

Leo turns back from the cabinet, sees Mike's face, and sighs. "Don, do you really need all of us at the junkyard?"

"Probably not," Don says, even as a huge grin begins to spread over the youngest brother's face.

"Okay," Leo says, barely able to keep the smile from metastasizing to his own face. "Mike, I'll go with you. We could use some other things anyway. Raph, go with Don... What?"

Raph scowls. "Did I say anything?"

"You looked like you were going to."

"I didn't _look_ like anything either."

"Okay." Leo holds up his hands. "My mistake." He moves to the table and pours himself some cereal. As soon as he sets the box down, Raph snatches it and pours some into his own bowl. Then he retreats to the corner to eat sullenly and listen to his brothers talk about how they plan to fill the long hours until sundown.

* * *

Don fills the hours with investigating the pump station's steam pipes, evaluating their state of disrepair and determining exactly how much effort will be necessary to turn them into a reliable heating system. He emerges from this work only for dinner, and then immerses himself in it again until someone bangs on the pipe he's looking at and startles him out of his focus.

"Hey, earth to Brainiac."

He blinks and turns. "What?"

"Sorry for rude, bro, but I was calling you for five minutes." Mike's expression turns worried. "Seriously, Donnie, where does your brain go?"

Don pulls a rag from his belt and wipes the grease off his hands. "Is that what you came here to ask me?"

"No," Mike says, immediately dropping the subject. "Just wanted to tell you Leo and I are heading out. Don't look there." He takes Don's shoulder and forcibly turns him away from the pressure gauge his eyes had just fallen on. "You and Raph should probably get going too. That means no more zombie-geeking." He waves a finger under Don's snout to emphasize his point. "They'll be there tomorrow, Donnie."

"Okay." Don holds his hands up to mime blinders, accidentally smearing grease on his face in the process. "I'm not looking."

Mike gently removes the dirty rag from his brother's fingers, and uses a clean corner of it to wipe Don's cheek. "Someday, Donnie, we'll teach you how to take care of yourself."

Don smiles and grabs the rag back. "Maybe someday I won't be so busy taking care of all of you." He sidesteps and snaps the rag at Mike's shell. "Get out of here."

With a yelp, Mike takes off. A moment later the door slams.

* * *

_Wham._

"Michelangelo!"

Raphael shakes his head at his father's belated reprimand, and bends to his work again.

A few minutes later, he's startled from his task by a much softer door noise, Donatello's characteristic inobtrusive knock.

"Raph?"

He hunches forward over his desk, protectively encircling the paper with his arms. "_What?_"

A slight hesitation. "Are you ready to head out?"

He glances at the folded page, then at the closed door. "I need two minutes!"

"Okay. I'll be downstairs."

As soon as Raph hears Don's footsteps moving away, he rises silently from his chair, palming the paper and slipping across the room to listen to his brother descend the stairs.

He counts the steps, and when Don reaches the bottom, he flings the door open noisily. "Keep your shell on, Donnie. Turtle's gotta pee."

"I -" It sounds like the beginning of _I didn't need to know that_, but then Don thinks better of it and says nothing.

Raph stomps to the bathroom, goes inside, shuts the door, does nothing for a few minutes, runs the water loudly, and stomps out again. On his way back towards the stairs, he looks sideways over the railing.

No one in sight.

As he passes Leo's door, he drops the folded paper and toes it through the crack at the bottom, without breaking his stride.

Just before he reaches the stairs, he turns suddenly, seizes the railing with one hand, and flips over it. He rises from his crouch to see Master Splinter watching him from the doorway of his room.

"Evenin', Sensei," he says, with a nod. Then he throws his head back and bellows: "Donnie! Are we goin' or what?"

* * *

"- and then Splinter pretty much told me never to do that again."

Leo raises a brow. "'Pretty much'?"

In the dim lighting of the sewers, he can't tell whether Mike looks repentant. "I think his exact words were, 'Michelangelo, if I ever catch you doing this again, you will do more flips than you are able to count.'" He pauses. "You can guess what Raph said." Then, in a voice that Leo decides doesn't sound repentant at all, he goes on, "But you really have to see -"

"No, Mike." Leo shifts the plastic bags in his hand and runs his thumb along the wall until he finds the release button. "I really _don't_ have to."

The door hisses open. For a moment warm light spills into the tunnel. Then it's obscured by two bulky shadows, and then it vanishes again.

Leo crosses the wide central chamber, moving to deposit his bundles in the kitchen. "Sensei, we're home."

Splinter emerges from his room, intercepts Leo's trail, and follows him. "Did you have a good evening?"

Mike drops his bags on the table and pulls out a box of the sought-after cereal. "Mission accomplished, Sensei."

Splinter raises a brow, and Leo has the sinking sensation that his brothers have been right all along, and he really is becoming his father.

"And also we got other stuff and didn't see any Foot ninja," Mike continues. He rapidly unpacks the rest of the bags before standing back and gesturing dramatically to their haul.

Splinter advances to the table and sniffs each package in quick succession. "It is good."

"You know," Mike says, as the three of them make short work of putting away the groceries, "we haven't seen any Foot since we moved in here."

"Don't complain," Leo says, even as he feels his fingers making the same gesture he sees Splinter making out of the corner of his eye. A gesture for warding off evil spirits.

He closes the cabinet.

"I am sure we will see them again soon enough," Splinter says. "Until then, let us enjoy the reprieve."

"Sounds good to me," Mike says, wadding up the empty bags and stuffing them into the overflowing drawer in the pantry. "I like reprieves."

Leo only nods, stretching his arms behind his head. "I think I'll turn in," he says. "See you in the morning."

"Good night, Leonardo."

"Night, bro."

With a reciprocal "good night", he paces out of the kitchen, climbs the stairs, and goes into his room, automatically sidestepping the white thing on the floor.

He flicks the light on and bends down to pick up the piece of paper. "And where did you fall from?" he murmurs.

He flips open the folded sheet, to see what it is, and doesn't recognize it. It's in Raphael's angular print and the words are unfamiliar.

Leo retreats to his bed to read it.

_Leo,_

_I'm starting to understand your story about the dragons. This is the sixth letter. Sorry if my handwriting is getting hard to read._

_There are some things I've needed to say to you, only I didn't know yet what they were. Now I do. I'm writing them down so you can't interrupt._

_Do you remember when we were kids, and we talked about the things we would do and have when we grew up? I think I said I wanted to be a racecar driver or something. But then after a while I stopped saying anything._

_Cuz I figured out we would never have any of that stuff. And I thought that maybe if I said I didn't want it, if I acted like I didn't want it, then maybe someday I'd start believing myself._

_Maybe someday I did._

_And it was better that way, cuz it's easier to not have stuff you don't want than to not have stuff you do want._

_Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is, I think I did the same thing to you. You went away, and I didn't know when you were coming back or if you'd be the same. I didn't - this sounds stupid, but I don't know how else to say it - I didn't know if I still had you._

_I think it started as just trying to figure out how to get through a day with you gone, cuz that's what we had to do. Then it was a week, and a month, and half a year, and we were doing okay, and it wasn't so hard to believe that we really __didn't__ need you around._

_And I think I'm still believing that, cuz after so long of not having stuff it's hard to think anything different._ _I need to be sure before I change my mind about that, cuz if I'm wrong I'll have to change it twice, and you know I'm stubborn and I wouldn't want to have to do that._

_So just tell me, Leo, are you here or not? Don't give me a long answer. Just write back yes or no. __And if you write yes then_

The last line is squeezed in at the bottom, and cuts off abruptly, seemingly at the point where Raph realized that if he wrote any more words then Leo wouldn't have an empty corner to tear off for his answer.

Leo stares at that corner, so blank with possibility. An indeterminate space, a void of the unknown.

He reads the letter a second time.

He feels that the answer should be easy, but he hesitates to give it lightly. He knows that when Raph asks _are you here?_ he means _can I count on you?_ He knows that when Raph says _I wouldn't want to have to do that_, he means _it would hurt too much_.

He wants to say _yes_, but he can't ask Raph to trust if that trust might be broken, because he knows that Raph trusts rarely and intensely, and feels the breaking of a bond as the loss of a limb.

He can't do that to him twice.

He sits, and thinks, and it's late in the night before he reaches for a pencil.

* * *

For possibly the first time in his life, Raph thinks Don didn't take _long enough_ combing the junkyards for his techno-crap.

He walks as slowly as possible through the sewers.

Part of him wants to rush home, burst into Leo's room, and demand an answer. Then at least he'd _know_. But another part of him would rather hedge its bets and stay forever in this moment of uncertainty.

Half-unconsciously, he moves toward a turn-off that would take them home by a longer route.

"_Raph_." Don's voice startles him, and his hands jump to his sai. "The shortest path, _please_."

With a grunt, Raph follows his brother down the other tunnel.

"Are you all right?" Don asks, after a moment. "You're acting like you barely know where you're going."

"'m fine."

Don casts him a sideways glance, but says no more.

Raph glares at the ground all the way home, but barely sees it. The next thing he knows, he's looking at the floor of the Lair as he follows Don inside.

He quits following Don when the brainiac veers off towards his workspace, and goes instead to stand on the bridge and stare down into the gray water.

He's not sure how much later it is when Don comes back, moving up beside him and resting a hand on his arm. "It's four in the morning," he says softly, "and I'm going to bed. You should too." His hand slides off, swinging back down to his side. "Sorry I took so long."

"No problem," Raph mutters.

The water flows. Don's door shuts with a click that seems to echo disproportionately around the silent Lair. Raph's fingers get tighter and tighter on the railing, until finally he pushes off it and marches up the stairs.

There's a scrap of paper taped to his door. He tears it off before his eyes can focus on the faint pencil marks. He clenches it in his fist, and it's only once he's stripped of his gear and safely curled in his hammock that he lets himself uncrumple it and look at what it says.

_YES_

He falls asleep with it clutched to his chest.


	14. The Way Home

Chapter Thirteen – The Way Home

Raph catches Leo shooting sideways glances at him all day, but he doesn't return them. It isn't until after dinner that he gets up the guts to go to Leo's room and knock on the door.

The answer is instantaneous. "Come in."

He slides in, closes the door softly behind him, and remains standing against the wall. "Got a minute?"

Leo is sitting on the bed, a shoebox full of carved figures beside him. Another, unfinished figure is in his hands, but at Raph's words he tucks it into the box with its brethren. "Sure."

Raph's eyes follow Leo's hand to the box. "You've been busy."

"No," Leo says. He leans over in the opposite direction to place his knife on the shelf, then returns to center, sitting erect and regarding Raph levelly. "This is what I do when I'm _not_ busy."

Raph shakes his head at the distinction. "You've made a lot of them, anyway."

Leo shrugs neutrally.

Raph crosses to the bed, looks into the box, and picks up a figure at random. It's a squirrel.

"You can keep any that you like," Leo says. He, too, picks up a carving and turns it between his fingers. "I - wasn't trying to bribe you, the other day. I just wanted..." He sighs and replaces the figure in the box. "The things you wrote in the letter. I always knew."

Raph's hand tightens around the squirrel. "Knew what?"

"That you wanted more than you let on." Leo watches Raph carefully.

"Yeah, well." Raph jams the squirrel back into the box, causing the other figures to rattle and knock against one another. "Never mattered much what I _wanted_."

"But it _should_ matter," Leo says. He draws his crossed ankles closer to himself and looks at Raph intently. "Because now we can have some of those things." He points to the box of carvings. "Because of this money. And we should all have a say in how it gets spent."

Raph takes a step back, folding his arms uneasily and fixing his gaze on the floor. "Look, Leo... it ain't really about the money. I think that's not what I said when this thing started, but I was wrong then. I wasn't focusing on what's important. I got carried away and... I really don't need that stuff."

"Raph."

It's a long moment before he can raise his eyes from the floor to his brother's face.

Leo is smiling at him. "It's okay to stop thinking that way. I like doing this. I'm not going to -" The corner of his mouth quirks up a few more degrees "- 'bail'."

Raph's mouth draws down, a reverse mirror of his brother. "Don't do it for me, Leo. You know I hate handouts."

The smile slips from Leo's face, and he looks away.

Raph shifts, leaning over slightly to try to read his brother's expression. "What?"

Several seconds tick by before Leo answers. "You know," he says, "Master Splinter told me something a few weeks ago. He said that I tend to - to _do_ things for people. To show I care."

Raph watches Leo through narrowed eyes, trying to decide whether he's serious, until Leo looks back at him with a question in his gaze.

Raph answers it with a question of his own. "You needed to be _told_ that?" Leo only looks at him blankly. "I mean, you didn't _know?_"

"It doesn't make sense," Leo says, and Raph decides he's _completely_ serious. "What other way is there?"

Raph relaxes his pose, his arms swinging down to his sides. "Y'know, Leo," he says. "Maybe sometime you oughta just hang out with us. Not training, or working, just doin' somethin' stupid." He shifts forward, jutting out an accusing finger. "Seems like y'ain't done much of that since ya got back."

Leo sits, pinned by that pointing finger. "It's been longer than that."

"Yeah, no kidding." Raph drops his hand, turns, and falls heavily onto the bed.

It seems to take eons for Leo to respond, but when he does, the answer is one that's worth waiting for. "Did you have something in mind?"

"For starters," Raph says, because he sees how a simpler answer could be misinterpreted, "I kinda had in mind that it wouldn't be a one-time thing."

From a tiny twitch in Leo's expression, Raph can tell his point has been made. "Okay. I get it." He shifts, trying to make the leap from the general back to the specific. "Do you want to... um..."

Raph waits, curious what Leo might offer as an example of purposeless fun. But when "um" turns into a blank gaze that travels around the room, seeking inspiration, Raph takes pity on his psychotically responsible brother, and throws him a suggestion.

"Donnie wants me to listen to something on the radio with him," he says. "You could join us."

Leo's gaze refocuses, snaps back to Raph. "What is it?"

Raph shrugs expansively. "Hell if I know."

For a moment Leo looks doubtful. Then a smile spreads slowly across his face, as though he's just discovered a delightful new facet of living. "I'd like that."

* * *

When they get downstairs, Don has propped the radio on a disemboweled console, and is turning the dial, trying to get a signal.

"What is this again?" Mike asks, from his place on the floor. Leo notes that Mike has had the foresight to bring a blanket to lie on. He wonders if he should go back upstairs for his own, but Raph's presence behind him holds him in place.

"A radio play," Don says, adjusting the antenna. "It's a collaboration between NYU's theater department and their campus radio station."

"A _radio play?_" Mike makes an expression of disgust. "Dude, didn't those go out sixty years ago?"

"Evidence would suggest otherwise," Don says. "There."

The static resolves, and a smooth voice announces the name of the show.

Leo stretches out on the floor, as the narrator begins to set the scene. Mike immediately throws a corner of blanket over his carapace, and uses him as a backrest. A rapid tapping vibrates through the cool concrete.

"Am I late?"

"Right on time, Sensei."

He nestles his head into the crook of his arm, and listens.

* * *

Splinter divides his attention between the play - almost as good as his stories - and his sons. Leonardo is lying still, his eyes closed, but the pattern of his breathing shows he is still awake and listening. Donatello sits facing the radio, attending to the drama as though he will be quizzed on it later. Michelangelo's gaze roams around the room for most of the first act, his hands fidgeting with the blanket. Eventually he produces a piece of chalk and starts sketching on the floor, until Raphael silently demands the implement and begins systematically defeating his brother in consecutive games of tic-tac-toe.

Splinter recenters himself, closes his eyes, and senses again the web of energy that connects his sons.

It feels looser now, more comfortable. Six weeks ago the lines were taut as violin strings, as his sons held tight to what they thought they had lost. Now they are relaxing, finding the confidence to move away from each other, secure in the knowledge that their brothers are still there, and that they can always follow the lines home.

There is slack in the web, and it hangs in gentle curves, like a net. Not a net that restrains, but one that catches when a daring soul reaches too far, buoying them up so they can reach again.

There is room to grow, and a safe place to land.

And that is all a father can wish for his sons.

* * *

"So, Leo," Mike says, the next morning at breakfast. "The article is coming out tomorrow. Sure you won't tell us what's in it?"

Leo calmly retrieves his toast. "Patience is a virtue, Mikey."

"Yeah, I know," Mike replies, "but it takes too long. Can't you give us just a little sneak preview?"

Leonardo smiles like his namesake's painting, and Mike knows it's going to be a long day.

* * *

The day turns out to be not _entirely_ boring. In the evening, while Mike is debating whether he should try to pry Don away from his computer so he can play more video games, or whether he should attempt to cajole as many brothers as possible into a game of ninja tag, Raph barges into his room with an intriguing request.

"Hey, Mikey," he says. "Will ya loan me fifty cents?"

"_Loan_ you?" Mike raises a brow. "How're you gonna pay me back?"

"I won't punch you in the head."

Mike considers this. "I charge interest."

"I won't punch you in the head _twice_."

Mike regards his brother critically. "You drive a hard bargain." He sticks out his hand. "All right, it's a deal."

Raph sticks out his hand too, but palm up, and the only thing he'll let Mike put in it is two quarters.

* * *

On his way out of Mike's room, quarters in hand, Raph hears his name being called. He sticks his head through Don's doorway to see what's up.

Don wordlessly tosses him something, and he reflexively catches it in his free hand.

"Yeah?" he says. "What's this?"

"Press the button," Don advises.

Raph thumbs the biggest button on the device. Immediately, alarms begin shrieking all around the Lair.

"What the fuck, Donnie?" he shouts over the ruckus.

"I have a remote for the alarms," Don replies, loudly and unnecessarily. "Just a test, Sensei," he adds, as Splinter appears, his face poised between parental wrath and protective fury.

"Where the hell's the off switch?" Raph demands, but then he finds it and the only ringing is in his ears.

"Donatello," Splinter says, opting for wrath, "while I greatly appreciate your skill at building things to protect and improve our home, your habit of testing them without warning is becoming disturbing."

"Sorry," Don says, catching the remote as Raph tosses it back to him. "Next time I'll give notice."

Splinter makes a 'hmph' noise, and stumps back downstairs, his cane clanging against the metal stairs.

"Hey, Donnie," Mike says, "what else does that remote do?"

But Leo drags him away before Don can give him any ideas.

* * *

The next morning, Raphael rises early and hits the streets.

The chill autumn wind makes his clothes sit a little more comfortably on his skin. His casual saunter and the gray fog make him invisible to the few passersby.

The red newspaper box stands out sharply in the colorless dawn. Raph spends a moment contemplating the bold headlines through the scratched window. Then he feeds his quarters into the slot, and takes a paper.

By the time his brothers get up, he's leaning nonchalantly against the wall outside the dojo, pretending to be fascinated by the day's breaking news.

* * *

"Give it!"

"Getcher own!"

"I paid for it, it _is_ my own!"

"I said I'd pay you back!"

Leo rolls his eyes heavenwards, and wonders whether he'll be able to sneak past without being dragged into his brothers' argument.

"Leo!"

The heavens reply, and it's a _no_.

"Leo, Raph has the paper and he won't let me see it!"

"Why the sudden interest in current events, Mikey?" Leo asks. He attempts to find a path into the dojo, but Mike is managing to occupy all parts of the doorway at once.

"Hey," Mike says. "It's not _my_ fault if I have to read a newspaper just to find out what my own family is doing."

Leo contains a sigh, so his brothers won't know how long he's been suffering. "Give it to him, Raph."

"No, no," Raph says, clearly enjoying being able to hold the paper out of his shorter brothers' reaches. "Let's wait 'til we're _all_ here."

"We're all here," Don says, plucking the newspaper from Raph's upraised fist. Splinter has materialized too, and as Don searches for the article he makes no suggestion that perhaps Leonardo's public humiliation could be postponed until after training.

"Here it is," Don says, and he clears his throat and begins reading. "'On a recent visit to antiques shop Second Time Around (176 Bleeker Street, Manhattan), I couldn't help noticing a leather-bound book on the sales counter. No rare first edition, this book instead invited visitors to comment on the handcrafted wooden figures displayed nearby. Many of the comments spoke of workmanship and artistic originality, but interspersed with these were stories of fortuitous rendezvous, unexpected windfalls, and disasters averted. More than one of these tales suggested that the totem-like figurines possessed mystical properties.

"'Asked about the provenance of these provocative pieces, proprietor April O'Neil replied that they were the work of a local teen who preferred to remain anonymous. I was, however, able to secure an interview with the mysterious artist, who asked to be identified simply as "Carver".'"

"'Carver'?" Mike groans. "That's the best you could come up with?"

"Shut your trap, _Turtle Titan_," Raph returns.

Don continues reading.

"'On the phone, Carver is quiet and well-spoken, very much the sensitive artist type.'"

At this point, Donatello has to stop again while Raphael laughs uproariously. Leo buries his face in his hands.

"Please continue, Donatello," Splinter says, when everyone besides Raph feels that the laughing has gone on long enough.

"'He admits to having no formal artistic training'," Don reads loudly, "'but his passion and dedication are clear, and his natural talent apparent. Still, he remains humble, seeming genuinely surprised by how warmly his work has been received. "The pieces always sell out," O'Neil reports. She describes Carver as a disciplined artist, but says he is kept busy by his schoolwork and other hobbies.

"'In response to a query on his choice of material and subject matter - realistic animal statuettes carved from found wood - Carver replies that he has always felt a strong connection to the natural world. His goal, he says, is to help the buyers of his pieces find a similar spiritual link through decorating their homes with objects made from, and representing, elements found in nature.'"

"That's not quite what I said," Leo mumbles.

"'The conversation'," Don continues, "'then turned to the stories of good luck patrons experienced after purchasing one of Carver's works. Asked if he believes his pieces are magical, Carver replied, "No, I don't think there's any magic in them. But I do believe that art inspires us. If my carvings help people to find their own strength, and create positive energy in their world, then I'm proud of that."'"

He falls silent.

"Is that it?" Raph asks.

"That's it." Don folds the paper back and passes it over.

"I think that's enough," Leo says. He can feel his face turning red. He will never live this down.

"Relax, Leo." Don slings an arm around Leo's shoulders, and guides him into the dojo. "It's the Arts section of the _Post_. Who else is going to read it?"

It isn't the _who else_ that Leo is concerned about.

* * *

After practice, Raph extracts the page with the article from the newspaper. He and Mike take turns reading the short piece and making jokes about it which are funny primarily to themselves. Don ignores them, taking the rest of the paper for himself and seeing if there's anything else interesting in it. Leo leans against the counter, eating his cereal and silently taking the abuse.

Finally, Raph tears the article from the page and tapes it to the fridge. "This is for posterity."

"Thank you," Leo says. "Maybe someday _you _guys will do something worthy of the refrigerator."

Raph and Mike gape at him. Then they burst out laughing. With Leo, this time, and not at him.

Don pulls out another section of the paper, folds it up, and sticks it in his belt.

* * *

Later, while waiting for his computer to compile a program, Don pores over the stolen insert. It's a furniture circular, and some of the items advertised in it might eventually come within his family's financial reach.

He looks again at the amount of money April is holding for them, and circles an inexpensive sectional.

A message pops up in the corner of his screen, telling him April has signed on. A moment later an IM window blinks into existence.

_I was hoping you'd be on._

He tucks his pencil into the side of his mask, and bends his fingers to the keyboard.

_What's up?_

_I sold Leo's dragon._

Don hesitates before replying. April hasn't previously felt the need to report individual sales to him.

_What, the big one?_

The response is so hasty that it contains typos.

_Yes, the big one. Donie, I sold ot for $200._

Surely that number is a typo too.

_$200?_

_TWO HUNDRED._

He sits back in his chair.

_Donnie?_

The message blinks unnoticed. Don is too busy doing some fast mental math. _85 percent of two hundred, plus what we already have..._

He snatches the pencil from his mask, recircles the advertised sofa, and scrawls _We can afford this. D._

He leaves the insert in the kitchen. By the end of the day, there are five initials on it.

* * *

The evening is uneventful. Don doesn't know of anything else worth listening to on the radio, and Mike can't be persuaded to play anything because "I'm working on my masterpiece, Raphie. Art connoisseurs everywhere will wish they had one on _their_ refrigerator."

He tries Leo next. He finds him sitting in his room, reading a book.

"Can't think of any more animals?" Raph says.

"Box is full," Leo replies.

Raph considers suggesting that the two of them run over to April's to deliver it, but the morning fog had promised evening rain, and he doesn't feel like going out. He casts about for something else the two of them might do.

Inspiration curls into him. "Hey, Leo," he says. "This thing you do now when you meditate… will you teach me?"

Leo sighs, closing his book around a finger. "Raph… It's not that easy. It takes -"

"Yeah, I know," Raph says. "Patience, hard work, yada yada." Leo still looks skeptical, so Raph slips into their odd dialect of Japanese, the language in which Leo first learned to trust. It's the best way he knows to express his sincerity. "Brother… will you teach me the first lesson?"

Leo studies him, and for a moment Raph expects to be chastised for his incorrect grammar. Then Leo lets go of the book and slides to the floor, beckoning Raph to sit with him, and answering him in kind. "The first lesson," he says, in their mother tongue, "is stillness."


End file.
